If you want good sound on-the-go that works with your iPhone – quality is often the trade off you need to make. Sure, a studio set-up will guarantee perfection, but to the practical, a better option is needed.

Blue Microphones has always had a unique and award-winning range of products, to address the mobile and digital user. I’ve owned a Blue Snowball for several years, using it to podcast on my laptop during university. A simple, relatively inexpensive and good quality USB microphone. My problem now is that I don’t carry a laptop anymore.

The Blue Spark Digital is all about portability.

Enter the Spark Digital. A variation on their Spark microphone, this one is geared for the musician or podcaster who uses iPads and iPhones. The goal here is to try and ditch the need for recording equipment, and even your computer, for an easy, high-quality, on-the-go recording session–whether vocals or instrumental. Does it work? Let’s start with the looks.

The first thing that strikes you about this microphone is that it’s beautiful. Employing the look of most of its brethren, the Spark Digital looks like a microphone you’d find in an old radio station.

The sideways cylindrical grill is housed in a shiny metal band that flows into the neck. The steel blue body has the logo across the front, with a control knob at the front and a switch at the back. At the base, hidden away, is a single port to plug in cables. In a word, it’s sexy.

At just over half a kilogram, it’s also heavy. That weight isn’t a bad thing, though. It makes it feel like a professional microphone – not a cheap piece of plastic. What does feel like a cheap piece of plastic is the supplied shockmount. While it serves its purpose very well, to keep vibrations from affecting the recording, it just feels brittle compared to the microphone.

There are several knobs at the top to adjust the rigidity of the base, but they never ended up turning for me. While the microphone looks like a million bucks, this feels like five. I never felt nervous about the microphone’s safety, but I did wish this were better quality.

Spark Digital and its Shockmount.

The cables that come with the Spark Digital are part of the hook for this product. You get a USB cable to connect to computers if you so wish, but the real draw is the 30-pin connector cable for Apple’s mobile devices. Not the latest Apple devices, mind you, though there are plans for a Lightning accessory (or you can buy an adapter).

Both these cables split off, providing a dedicated 3.5 mm headphone port. This allows for direct monitoring of the output, rather than through your device–important because there’s no chance of the sound being delayed or inaccurate through software.

Fortunately, the plug and play nature of the Spark Digital makes working with software easy. I used Garageband on the iPad and despite the painful simplicity of the software, the recording was clean. It didn’t drain my iPad’s battery either, only using power when recording.

The Spark Digital’s record pattern is cardioid, and to avoid being too technical, that means it’s only good for close-up recording from one direction. Unlike the Snowball or Yeti (other USB solutions from Blue), it doesn’t have an omni-directional mode. It’s a fair trade-off, considering the Spark Digital has a few extra features to manipulate sound.

The main purpose of the Spark is that it hooks directly into iOS devices.

The knob on the front has three functions: headphone volume control, mute, and gain control. When you’re monitoring through your headphones, the knob glows blue. You can adjust it by turning the knob and the corresponding lights will indicate the level.

Press that knob once and you can instantly mute the mic, which is useful as a cough button. Press that knob for 3 seconds, and it glows orange, allowing for gain adjustment. Gain increases or decreases the strength (amplitude) of the signal being recorded.

The back switch is called Focus Control, and gives you a much closer sound, reducing background sound. That mode helps cut out a lot of useless frequencies that may be noisy, and helps focus on the human voice.

I invited a friend to sing and play guitar using the Spark Digital, and even though Garageband told me he was peaking, the final file was perfect thanks to a combination of gain adjustment and Focus Control. Again, software will probably be your biggest hurdle–but at least Garageband allows for uncompressed exporting to iTunes in Apple’s lossless AIF format.

Rich sound comes at a price, though. The Spark Digital retails for 200 dollars, and it comes with all I mentioned above, and a soft carrying case (which feels pretty great). That may seem steep in comparison with Blue’s other digital microphones, but it offers a different concept than say, a Yeti or a Snowball. While those mics offer different modes for desktop recording, the Spark Digital is about portability and quick ease of use. It’s all about your use case.

As a podcaster, I often get tired of packing my Zoom H4n, lav mics and tripod to a recording session, then taking time to set up the wires, get the levels right and plug into a power source (if I can find one). Here’s the thing, though: I’ve never had a bad session with that setup.

The gain control is easy to access.

To me, portability comes after reliability, versatility and quality. The Spark Digital’s cardioid pattern isn’t the greatest for a two-person conversation, and Garageband is pretty terrible for any chat longer than 320 bars. So while setting up would be easier, the Spark Digital wouldn’t serve my purpose.

I see this as a wonderful product for the solo artist. If you’re always wanting to create on the go with an iDevice, this is for you. The quality of the sound paired with the unforgettable looks adds to the allure of the Spark Digital.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/personal-tech/review-blue-spark-digital-has-good-sound-and-a-great-look/feed0Spark Digital and iPadanandramakrishnanBlue Spark DigitalSpark Digital and ShockmountThe main purpose of the Spark is that it hooks directly into iOS devices. The gain control is easy to access. Review: Crysis 3 is a solid first-person shooterhttp://o.canada.com/technology/gaming/review-crysis-3-is-a-solid-first-person-shooter
http://o.canada.com/technology/gaming/review-crysis-3-is-a-solid-first-person-shooter#commentsWed, 06 Mar 2013 19:30:44 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=210175]]>Before I started playing Crysis 3, I was asked one question that has become a right of passage with Crysis games: Can your computer handle it?

Welcome to the first hurdle of Crysis 3, a game from a series that has long boasted its visual fidelity as unparalleled. A first-person shooter to blow your mind, if your computer can let it. While all games in the series are now available on Xbox 360 and PS3, there’s always a rabid fan base that will want to play the game at the maximum graphical capability.

They won’t be disappointed.

A pretty face, a blunt instrument

Crysis 3, from German video game company Crytek, is beautiful to look at. Using their proprietary CryEngine, the game is one of the better-looking titles you’ll see this year. From the environments to the enemies to the explosions, everything feels very exciting.

The world you’re put in is set two decades after the events of the previous game. The game has a neat little video called “Previously in Crysis” that catches you up on the storyline, even if you haven’t played the other games in the series.

In this game, you play as Laurence “Prophet” Barnes, a man that was part of an elite squadron given nanosuits of great strength and power. They were unaware that the suits were made of alien material, taken from a bio-mechanical alien species known as the Ceph, who have lived dormant for millions of years. The story is actually much deeper and crazier than this, but let’s just jump ahead.

At the start of the game, Prophet is busted out of holding by his former teammate Michael “Psycho” Sykes. He discovers that the evil corporation (C.E.L.L.) that betrayed him is abusing Ceph technology, locking down New York City in a giant biodome. Prophet must stop C.E.L.L. from trying to take the Ceph’s power – but they don’t know what they’re in for.

All this is probably an excuse to show off some amazing set design. It may be funny to say, but the blades of grass in Crysis 3 are wonderful to look at. Swimming through the water is very serene. When I say you play as Prophet, you really do.

Taking enemies out with a bow and arrow never gets old.

Much of the game, including cut scenes, are in first-person. So every explosion is more impressive, every epic jump more heart-stopping. The areas are well-designed, combining the elements of the organic and technological, balancing the human/alien symbiotic themes that run through the game. Some of the environments even reminded me of Ninja Theory’s 2010 game, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

The storyline, as you can see, isn’t as pretty. It’s convoluted and forcefully told through very simple dialogue. Even the motivations are simple: Company wants power. Soldier wants to fight. Hive mind aliens want to conquer earth.

Prophet delivers some of the most obvious one-liners to explain what happens in a scene two seconds earlier. The enemies aren’t too bright with their words either. Who yells out “We’re being hunted!” to his fellow henchmen? If you know you’re being hunted, make as little noise as possible, you clown.

But in its ridiculousness, there are science fiction themes (albeit very few) that add depth to this wading pool. An example can be found in the most unlikely character, the foul-mouthed cockney-accented Psycho.

Michael has constant moments of anger and weakness. With his suit taken away, he yearns to be the super soldier he once was, all the while forgetting that by retaining his humanity, he does not turn into the enemy he seeks to destroy. Unfortunately, Prophet goes ahead and says all this out loud at one point, ruining the chance for the player to extract the lesson for themselves. Subtlety isn’t the game’s strong suit.

Cloak engaged

Its strong suit is, well, the suit itself. The nanosuit gives you the satisfaction of being invisible or impenetrable, adding more to your tactics. Of course, the suit isn’t powered very well, so you will be hiding a lot just to recharge cloaking/maximum armour.

It’s hard to not be amazed by the game’s grass.

The suit will also divide you. As with most games, stealth has more advantages for sneaking around, but power will get you out of a sticky situation. Crysis 3 also allows you to upgrade certain attributes of the nanosuit with a set of loadouts. For example, on a watery level, you can choose a loadout that lets you walk through water faster.

If you’re a melee enthusiast, there’s an upgrade that makes you stronger (albeit slower). The game encourages you to think about playing in different ways across scenarios, but I found myself picking a balanced set of attributes and sticking with it.

The suit has two ways of examining your surroundings: the visor and nanovision. The first is what I spammed the most during my play through. With every new area, I flicked on my visor right away and “tagged” enemies. The visor can also identify helpful ammo pickups and hack into enemy turrets and mines. There were entire levels where I would just hack the turret and let it do the work. Nanovision shows an enemy’s heat signature, which helps when you want to see their shape and not just their movement.

The reds of their eyes

To deal with C.E.L.L. and the Ceph, you’ll need more than cloaking and identifying. In Crysis 3, there’s a wide range of futuristic assault weapons and explosives. I don’t know if it’s the Hindu mythology lover in me, but my favourite was the Predator Bow. For stealth fans, it’s incredibly satisfying.

The Nanosuit plays a large role in Crysis 3.

Each weapon is heavily customizable, from its sight, grip and barrel to its ammo–and the arrows are so much fun to switch between. Use an Electro Arrow on a pool that five enemies are standing in. Use a Super-Thermite Tip Arrow to shoot the middle of a group of Ceph, and watch the rest of them try to avoid the blast. The only weapon that you can use while cloaked, the Predator Bow is great fun and is often the best way to deal with overwhelming odds quietly.

That being said, there are tons of ammo drops and weapon mods around every nook if you’re the type to take care of the trash with a red-dot sight. This is one element of the game that excelled in every way–I never felt at a loss with any weapon, even the Ceph ones (though some of those felt over-powered).

Flaws in the armour

Not being the best at first-person shooters, I finished this game in about 11 hours. The game whisks you along quite quickly. While it’s certainly impressive to look at and play, I can’t help but wish there were more.

Some of the cut scenes were so impressive that they made me want to play that moment. Then I wondered why I couldn’t. I saw Prophet do things in cut scenes that could easily have been interactive. It felt as if the game was defining its boundaries–saying we can make this incredibly beautiful, but see with your eyes, not with your hands.

Crysis 3 looks amazing on a high-end PC.

Another issue I had with the game was its awful driving mechanics. My kingdom for a first-person shooter that gets driving sequences to be more satisfying. You feel strapped into a rhino that’s been poked by a rapier–and on top of all that, you have to shoot the bad guys while in it. Visceral, but ineffective and not fun.

The multiplayer mechanics are as enjoyable as the campaign, with loads of customizations for weapons and armour upgrades. You get your standard variations of King of the Hill and Capture the Flag, but a few unique ones. In “Hunter”, two players get Predator Bows and stalk the others. In “Extraction”, your team has to collect devices and return it to an area to score a point. Of course, I was killed within five seconds of spawning in every mode I tried, so I may just be going off of what the game told me was the motivation for that round.

Remember me, the Prophet asks

On PC, Crysis 3 promises an FPS like no other and it delivers in every area but its story and characters. But it’s not something that needs to be played on PC. Sure, it can be prettier on PC running some smashing hardware, but it doesn’t look horrendous on console. What you’ll remember is how it plays, and no matter where you play it, those mechanics will be just as fun.

Crysis 3 was released on February 19th, 2013 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. For this review, I played the PC version of the game.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/gaming/review-crysis-3-is-a-solid-first-person-shooter/feed1Crysis 3anandramakrishnanCrysis 3crysis 3Crysis 3Crysis 3Review: Guardians of Middle-earth brings a traditional PC genre to consoleshttp://o.canada.com/technology/gaming/review-guardians-of-middle-earth-brings-a-traditional-pc-genre-to-consoles
http://o.canada.com/technology/gaming/review-guardians-of-middle-earth-brings-a-traditional-pc-genre-to-consoles#commentsFri, 21 Dec 2012 06:39:07 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=172348]]>With Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit now in theatres, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth lives again on the screen. But there exists another way to see his creations this holiday season, in Monolith Productions’ Guardians of Middle-earth.

It’s a video game where a strange alliance of acronyms is at work. This is a MOBA that tries to combine DotA with LotR while on a console through XBLA or PSN.

If you understood none of that, fear not, it was an unexpected journey for me as well. Let’s go together.

Guardians is a Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game. If you’ve ever played Age of Empires, Warcraft or Command & Conquer, a MOBA is borne out of that. Instead of giving you omniscience and omnipotence over all your forces, you control ONE character on the map. Your objective: Destroy your enemy’s main stronghold. In Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a game that popularised this genre, destroying the enemy’s Ancient (their base’s core structure) won the game.

It’s not too dissimilar a concept here. As the name suggests, you take control of one of five “guardians” on your team–playable characters from Tolkien lore. Fans of the movies will find a few characters they know – Legolas, the great archer and Gandalf the Grey, wizard. To those who haven’t read the deeper lore (like The Silmarillion), other names like Gothmog and Beregond will confuse. A strange choice, as more recognisable characters would feel more fun and sell better. You can buy more, but by the time you get enough coin to do so, you’ll have learned how to use the ones you didn’t know.

Whoever you choose, you’re going into battle along with four allies. The map and goal are always clear: make your way to the enemy’s stronghold, encountering their foot soldiers and attack towers on the way. The game gives you the option of playing either 3-lane, a larger arena with many areas of combat between both sides, or 1-lane, where the ebb and flow of war exists on a single path.

Guardians of Middle Earth is the first Lord of The Rings focused game in a long time.

Not being familiar with MOBA games, there is a learning curve. With your character, you start with three techniques, mapped to the X, A and B keys. As you level up–by defeating enemy foot soldiers, towers, random creatures or enemy Guardians – you gain a fourth power, and can upgrade each one. Balancing your basic attacks with special abilities achieves victory.

Sounds fun, right? Actually, it’s aggravating. For anyone who expects a action-packed brawler with Lord of the Rings character, think again. This game might as well be called Waiting: The Game of Tactical Retreats. MOBAs are all about attacking when its opportune. Every power you have has a cool down. If you go in and spend all of them at once, you’ll get killed before they regenerate (and you probably won’t take down a tower or enemy Guardian). Winning tactics involve weaving in and out, letting your foot soldiers do some of the work while you augment the flow of battle. Stun or Silence enemies with powers. Heal or buff your allies so that their own attacks are stronger.

These complexities are key to a deep MOBA experience, especially for those who have played DotA or League of Legends. Knowing your characters’ abilities, movement speeds, cool downs and loadouts (gained/bought as your profile ranks up) is the only way you’ll win a normal battle. Unfortunately, these complexities are truncated by the nature of where the game is played.

These games exist on PC for a reason. There are huge communities of players who do this professionally. Mapping hotkeys, measuring actions per minute, etc. It’s about precision. On Xbox, Guardians is much more inaccurate because dual analog sticks are not a keyboard and mouse. It will take some time to master the basics–and that will mean a serious amount of waiting.

The cool downs apply to death as well. The more you die, the higher your respawn time is. On top of that, you move at what can only be described as a snail’s grandfather’s morning stroll. You can very well take 48 seconds to respawn, 20 seconds to cross the field, only to die 2 seconds later. Imagine that repeating.

Sometimes the action in Guardians of Middle Earth gets a little chaotic.

Through all this initial trial and error, I didn’t feel I was any closer to Tolkien’s world. It looked like any forest of fantasy I was fighting in, any cast of champions I could create, let alone Tolkien. But I kept playing because the style of game was intriguing, and the rewards are clear, if not abundant.

Playing online is fun, too, but the wait times are a mixed bag. Sometimes, I waited 4 times the usual average to get into a match, while other times, I was jumped into a game right away. Minor gripes include the occasional latency issues and an unclear menu system. Setting up a simple custom match with me facing the AI took a few tries to get right. Also, the game always asks me where it should put my saves every time I start up.

It’s far from a perfect experience, combining those acronyms that, perhaps, were never meant to be put together. I think Guardians of Middle-earth is an attempt to try and bring a MOBA game to the console world. However, it feels like it’s trying to attract a hardcore audience with toned-down features, which means it does nothing extraordinary. If you paid $15 for an Xbox Live game, chances are you’re not expecting a lesson in patience. You want to jump in and get to the action.

This game was downloaded and reviewed on the Xbox 360. It was released on December 4th and is available on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/gaming/review-guardians-of-middle-earth-brings-a-traditional-pc-genre-to-consoles/feed0guadrians of middle-earthanandramakrishnanGuardians of Middle EarthGuardians of Middle EarthTech that gives back: Virgin’s RE*Generation phonehttp://o.canada.com/technology/tech-that-gives-back-virgins-regeneration-phone
http://o.canada.com/technology/tech-that-gives-back-virgins-regeneration-phone#commentsSat, 15 Dec 2012 22:07:56 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=169150]]>We’re told the holidays are a time for giving. Some of us take this to heart, some of us shrug it off. But we all continue our consuming. When it comes to giving to charity, some of us are cynical. We wonder whether any of our money will end up towards the cause we want it to. Admittedly, I’m one of these people.

So when I heard that Virgin Mobile and Samsung want to raise money for youth homelessness in Canada through the sale of their phones, my guard went up.

I write about consumer technology – a market where people’s voracious appetites for the most frivolous gadgets is only matched by companies caring more about a bottom line and profits than creating a good product. Youth homelessness doesn’t sound like it meshes in that world.

Their pitch is simple: If you buy a Samsung Galaxy Ace II X on Virgin Mobile, $15 per sale will go to Virgin Unite’s RE*Generation – donated to organizations trying to help the 65,000 Canadian young people who don’t have a home.

According to Andrew Bridge, Managing Director of Virgin Mobile Canada, the RE*Generation program is “all about helping a generation help its own.” He says it’s raised a little over 2 million dollars since its inception for various causes that help address at-risk youth challenges in Canada. To date, there have been 4 such offerings of RE*Generation-branded phones, a process Virgin collaborates with their handset partners on. This year, it’s the Galaxy Ace II X.

“We think it’s a great phone because it’s a brand our target [customer] loves,” Bridge says, “We expect it to do great business for us and in turn, raise some great money for the RE*Generation.” The goal is $200,000, the same amount they raised last year.

But where will that money go? With so many steps along the way, there are many possible places for the $15 to divide itself. As far as Virgin Mobile is concerned, the money will get to the organizations they partner with–with absolutely none going to administrative costs.

For the uninitiated, billionaire/philanthropist Richard Branson is the chairman and founder of Virgin. The company’s non-profit wing, Virgin Unite, is in charge of RE*Generation.

“One of the differences you’ll see from Virgin Unite versus other organizations,” Bridge told me, “is that Richard personally pays for all of the overhead to drive activity for programs. So every penny that’s raised in the front lines goes right to the charities.”

As impressive as that sounds, following the money meant my cynicism now pointed squarely at the organizations that were helping out homeless youth. So I spoke with one of the company’s flagship partners that they’ve worked with for years: Eva’s Initiatives.

It was only a few minutes in my conversation with Maria Crawford, executive director of Eva’s Initiatives, to wash that cynicism away. Her passion for her job and aversion to cookie-cutter fixes proves this is an organization that genuinely knows how to help homeless youth.

“Our whole focus is on long-term solutions for those youth. (They) come from different places and require different supports to make that transition out of homelessness and back into the community.”

From traditional housing to substance abuse counselling to family reconciliation programs, Eva’s has been helping at-risk and homeless youth since 1994. They’ve been working with Virgin for a while too, and Crawford told me about the work that Richard Branson has personally done with Eva’s.

The question, remains, though: what will they do with my $15?

“It results in funding for direct programs that are working on the ground with these kids to help them get off the streets,” Crawford says. “It’s working to raise awareness, which is even more powerful. Attracting volunteers to the program … right down to things like this month, the holidays — helping youth who are spending the holidays in a shelter as opposed to with family and friends. Making sure they have meals to eat, gifts, some activities — it really does range from macro to micro.”

Even the bitter Grinches among us can rest assured that their money wouldn’t go to Virgin and would be used effectively by an organization like Eva’s – whose successful model for helping youth is also being sought internationally.

The only real flaw in “technology that gives back” is the technology. Bridge called the Samsung Galaxy Ace II X a mid-tier phone. At $200 off-contract, he’s right. But that’s the problem: It’s a middling phone.

On paper, It’s a 4-inch Android device, running 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) underneath Samsung’s “TouchWiz” skin. The screen isn’t mind-blowing, at 480 by 800 pixels. A 5MP camera, 1 GHz single-core processor, and only 2 GB of usable onboard storage (expandable through a microSD slot) make this a phone that can do most everything – but won’t do it quickly or better than more modern smartphones.

It doesn’t load up apps very quickly, it can chug when overloaded (playing Angry Birds Star Wars started well but got a little laggy) and its scrolling isn’t very smooth. I was impressed by its loud speaker–and TouchWiz made full use of it with its ridiculous nature sounds. The body of the phone is also quite sturdy–to the point where I actually liked its weight and feel. I didn’t like how eerily it looks like an iPhone 4.

But let me be clear, it’s not trying to be a iPhone or its much older brother, the Galaxy S3. It’s also not as behind the times as a flip-phone or BlackBerry. You get Android’s great selection of apps and, while I rail against Samsung’s interface, it doesn’t restrict functionality. Remember, this phone is $200 off-contract and free if you use Virgin’s SuperTab (both options will still result in $15 being donated).

I would have loved the S3 or the iPhone 5 as the RE*Generation phone, but the decision is part business, part philanthropy. Virgin Mobile Canada (owned by Bell) deals with the prepaid/postpaid market, where customers want less expensive phones and plans.

Virgin’s RE*Generation phone this year may not be spectacular, but it does the job. More importantly, the cause is incredibly solid. If it isn’t the phone for you, remember, you can help out in other ways. Virgin Mobile gives its customers the option of adding a dollar to their existing plan that will be donated to RE*Generation. You can also give $5 by texting REGEN to 30333. If you want to give something more substantive, Eva’s is always looking for volunteers. So while technology giving back is the unlikely merger of capitalism and charity–I think there are ways it can work. And it starts with noble intentions.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/tech-that-gives-back-virgins-regeneration-phone/feed0Galaxy Ace II press shotanandramakrishnanGalaxy Ace II press shot frontGalaxy Ace II press shot backReview: Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth will get your kids into comicshttp://o.canada.com/technology/gaming/review-marvel-avengers-battle-for-earth-will-get-your-kids-into-comics
http://o.canada.com/technology/gaming/review-marvel-avengers-battle-for-earth-will-get-your-kids-into-comics#commentsWed, 12 Dec 2012 19:56:48 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=167182]]>There’s no doubt that one of the biggest action movies of 2012 was The Avengers. So now it’s time to bring on the tie-ins to cash in, right?

When I first saw Ubisoft Quebec’s Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth, I instantly thought it was going to be a passable Kinect title used to squeeze money out of a huge franchise.

Several hours later, sides aching, greased with sweat, there was a triumphant smile across my face. This is a great game.

The reason for that is simple: details. The feeling that this game wasn’t slapped together. Ubisoft easily demonstrates they have a handle on how to toe the line between a motion gaming aimed at casual players and the vast property that is the Marvel universe. With Avengers: BFE, they’ve created an arcade fighting game that doesn’t suffer from over-simplified mechanics or watered-down characters–all while still maintaining the point of using motion controls.

BFE isn’t based on Joss Whedon’s summer blockbuster at all – it stands more in the main universe of the comics, especially the 2008 storyline “Secret Invasion” by Brian Michael Bendis. However, the story isn’t unapproachable if you’ve only seen the movie. Earth is being attacked by shapeshifting aliens known as the Skrull (kind of like the Chitauri in the movie) and the only hope is the planet’s mightiest heroes.

The use of shapeshifters allows the fighting aspect of the game to hold some semblance of a plot as The Avengers take on evil Skrull versions of themselves. There are 20 different playable characters with unique abilities, including Wolverine, Thor and The Hulk. The story is told through a mix of comic-book panels and voice acting, and the fighting takes place in areas such as the S.H.I.E.L.D helicarrier and The Savage Land. The lack of locations and arenas is quite disappointing as you’re often just fighting tougher enemies in the same location.

Iron man is unleashing the pain.

The ensemble nature of the Marvel universe helps, but only because Ubisoft uses the cast well. As a kid, I knew about Spider-Man and Captain America. If you asked me who Abigail Brand was, I would have no idea. But that’s part of this game’s charm; I want to know who that is now. I want to know her backstory and how she ties in with The Avengers. All that being said, the unfortunate part is that story always takes a backseat to the action of this 2-on-2 brawler.

Fighting breaks down like this: 2 on 2, best of 3 rounds. So if it wasn’t cool enough to stomp around as Hulk, you can tag out and repulsor blast the bad guys as Iron Man. The Kinect sensor does a pretty good job of recognizing moves, but it’s far from perfect. Make sure you have some space, too–it’s arms and legs combat.

There are basic moves with every character – punching forward to punch and raising your leg to dash forward. Super moves, however, are 2 actions, unique to each character. While some characters share the same movements to activate a super move, the actual move is different. Raising your hand to the air and then swinging down as Hulk looks different than doing it as Thor.

Super moves can be combined to form combos, the most fun of which are tag combos. For example, as Scarlet Witch you can backhand slap to blast chaos magic at your enemies. Then, quickly raise your left hand up to tag out for Hawkeye. Then make the really awesome move of grabbing an arrow from a “quiver” on your back and fire your “bow.” If it sounds ridiculous, it is, but it works. I’m a grown man who had way too much fun doing that. The complexity of weaving in blocks, dodges, counters, ultras and combo breakers also keep the game interesting. In a word, it’s not flailing combat – it’s almost like a coordinated dance with the instructions always at the lower right part of the screen.

There are a variety of game modes, including co-op and online multiplayer. You level up your profile with each battle, unlocking new characters and costumes (with the option of purchasing more looks through DLC). Navigating menus in motion gaming can be troublesome but Ubisoft has done a good job integrating simple swipe gestures. If you ever get tired of that, just say the word “Assemble” and every menu option can be read out loud. The key is to get into the fighting quickly and BFE makes sure of that.

Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth is a fun title for the comic book-loving kid in your life. While it’s rated T for Teen, I think older players may be surprised by how fun it can be. Especially when you can say the words “Hulk Smash” then actually do it.

Marvel Avengers: Battle For Earth was released on October 30th for the Xbox 360. The game is also available for the Wii U and was released on December 4th.

When I was a kid, I had an odd tradition every weekend. The weekly flyers – the ones that major retailers and grocery chains put out – landed on my doorstep and Saturday mornings were the time to sift through them and pick out the ones I really cared about. The electronics stores.

The Futureshop, Best Buy and RadioShack (while it still existed in Canada) flyers were my delight. The thick TigerDirect booklet would keep me occupied for hours. Occasionally, my sister and I would play a game: open to a page and pick one item that you want from that page. We weren’t poor kids growing up, but we weren’t rich. In our house, electronics were always luxuries.

So, as I sat and looked at the 70-inch television in front of me, part of me knew that this is what my inner child had always wanted and always pointed to in those flyers. It was a dream. It was the joke I would make to my father, “Yeah we should probably pick up this really big TV – Ma, we’re gonna go do that, be back later.” It was never meant to be anything more than a weekend laugh.

It’s a beast.

But there it was. The Sharp Aquos LC70LE845U – an inelegant name that could only be adorned with many acronyms. 3D. LED. Full HD. Wi-Fi enabled. Numbers, too – 1080p, 240 Hz refresh rate, 8 million to 1 contrast ratio. But I knew what those meant – all I could focus on, however, was one basic fact: This TV was enormous.

If my tiny life story from above is any indication, you need to realize that this review is not a logical assessment of whether this TV is the one you should buy this holiday season. This is akin to a dream diary – it’s writing down my experience with something I could only have imagined experiencing. It’s so that many of you can ask the question: Is buying my dream TV worth it?

Monolithic

As big as the Aquos is, it struck me that it was so thin. To explain why, you have to know a little bit about TVs. TVs marketed as “LED TVs” are actually in the same family as LCD TVs. They both have a display made up of crystals – but the difference is how they provide a light source. You can think of standard LCD TVs using something like a fluorescent light bulb to do that. The Aquos, and TVs like it, use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as the light source. The benefit is that they use less power and last longer. But even in TVs that use those LEDs–there are two kinds. In this TV, the LEDs are placed around the edges – giving the TV less junk in the trunk.

Quite thin, all the way through.

Being thin doesn’t mean that it isn’t heavy. 70 inches is 70 inches, and you’ll need two people to move this thing around, even if 90 pounds is nothing to you. Fortunately, there are solid places to grip it.

In front of 70 inches of screen, you feel like Morgan Freeman in The Dark Knight. It’s a large black monolith, something you’ll see yourself in. That’s not an emotional statement, there’s just so much glass staring back at you that, when it’s off, it’s a dull mirror. Helping that is a thin, brushed metal bezel. As nice as those touches are, it’s still big.

In truth, that’s part of the problem with such a gigantic TV. It dominates the room. I have high ceilings in my living room and it still felt like the TV just didn’t belong. Where you place a TV is also important to the picture. You can’t expect to get the full advantage of high-definition images when you’re sitting too close. The general consensus for a TV of this size is that you need to be at least 8 or 9 feet away.

Moving pictures

If you are sitting at the right distance, you’ll get the fullest sense of high definition: 1920 by 1080 pixels. Sharp promotes its “Quattron” technology in this Aquos TV, which again requires a bit of science to understand. TVs display variations of red, blue and green pixels (RGB) to form every colour you see on the screen.

Sharp adds a fourth colour, yellow, theoretically increasing the variation of colours we see. However, the reason we use RGB as a basis for display technology is because most humans are trichromatic – which basically means that the cells in our eyes deal in reds, greens and blues. Mine certainly do, because I didn’t notice the yellows any more or less than on my existing 46-inch Sony Bravia. I won’t claim that Quattron is bad science, because tetrachromacy does exist–I just think Quattron technology lends itself more to wide-eyed marketing.

In the end, the picture is great. In high-definition, whether compressed by your cable provider or the full HD of a Blu-ray, the image was crisp and didn’t feel inaccurate. There’s a whole range of settings with this TV to adjust the image, including presets for video games, sports and the like. The only gripe I had was with the contrast, which is how dark the black appears on-screen. Due to the nature of edge-lighting in LED TVs, this Aquos isn’t capable of the deepest contrast. If you want the best LED TV, get one that has “full-array with local dimming” – where the LEDs are placed behind (not around the edge) and can be turned on and off independently.

My favourite duo.

There’s a trend in TVs that some people may not like, and that’s increasing the refresh rate to correct motion blur. It makes everything feel like it’s been shot at a higher frame rate, which I love. At 240 Hz, this TV does that really well. You can turn it off or adjust it, in case things feel a little too Bourne Ultimatum for you.

I turned it down while gaming, so it better responded to my controller. With its size and picture, jumping through the trees in Assassin’s Creed 3 felt like true immersion into the experience. If you can believe it, even Minecraft seemed more fun on a giant TV, and that’s a game where visual detail isn’t all that important.

In addition to a great picture quality, the Sharp is also capable of 3D. Unlike higher refresh rates, this is something I don’t like in my TV experience. The first reason of which is that I don’t feel it adds anything to the depth of the picture of your everyday TV channel. That being said, with a game like Assassin’s Creed or WipEout HD in 3D, the experience is greatly enhanced and incredibly fun.

The second reason I don’t care for 3D are the glasses. Sharp uses active shutter glasses, which basically flicks each eyepiece on and off really quickly to trick your brain into seeing depth. The glasses are really durable and the battery lasts quite a while (you have to charge them via a provided mini-USB cable), but the rigidity of the frames hurt my temples after a while.

3D also tends to darken the image I’m seeing. While the TV did have the ability to boost brightness in 3D, it still felt darker than what I knew the TV could do with a 2D image. One of the cooler parts of the glasses, however, is that a person can choose to watch in 2D while someone else watches in 3D–but you both have to be wearing the glasses, and the 2D image will be darkened because of that. They also cost about 70 bucks a pop, so don’t lose them.

Room-filling in more than one way

The sound that the Sharp 70 inch TV produced was quite muffled. The setting you need to put it on to deliver something decent is called “3D Sound.” These are a series of presets that can make it feel like a stadium or a large hall, if you want to recreate the feeling of a concert or live sports. You want the 3D sound in either standard or movie mode to get any decent dialogue without completely bass-heavy voices.

The Sharp HT-SB60 Soundbar and wireless subwoofer.

But if this is going into your house, chances are it’s part of a home theatre system. Alongside this TV, I had the chance to review one of Sharp’s sound systems: the Sharp HT-SB60. It’s a sound bar specially designed for TVs bigger than 60 inches.

Hardly inconspicuous, the bar is about 4 and a half feet, responsible for your mids and high sounds. It’s a 2.1 channel system, delivering 310 Watts of sound between the bar and an included wireless subwoofer, which pairs easily. The whole setup took less than 5 minutes.

While the soundbar can be mounted to a wall, the placement of its HDMI ports can make cable management tricky. I was disappointed by the 2 HDMI ports. If this truly was an entertainment-focused system, they’d have thrown in a few more ports. Also, they face inward, and on less sturdy HDMI cables, that can mean a hard bend forming after a while.

The ports issue is bypassed when you have a Sharp TV, because the sound system knew to automatically use the sound from whatever is plugged into the Aquos directly. But to use the sound system as a receiver can be tricky. Every time I wanted to switch between my PS3 and the TV, it took several attempts at cycling between HDMI ports to get both the TV to display the correct image, and the sound to come out of the HT-SB60.

And what of that sound? It’s great. It’s loud, not too heavy on the bass, and can be tweaked. It’s not going to be your most powerful system, and because of the placement, you won’t get true surround sound. But you’ll get a hell of a simulation. Watching a movie like The Dark Knight felt very cinematic. The HT-SB60 is more than capable of filling a room with sound if you don’t want to hook up a complex sound system.

Smart TVs need intelligence behind them

Picture and sound are the important parts of a television, no question. These days, TVs tend to come with some fringes, including Wi-Fi connectivity and apps. Other than the hassle of setting up your Wi-Fi connection through a remote control, these features are relatively harmless. Only a few stood out as pretty great, namely Netflix and YouTube.

Can’t miss it.

That big red button you see on the remote works quite well, instantly jumping into your Netflix account through an on-board app. It’s quicker to load than my PS3 or Xbox and much better to look at than my iPad or computer screen. Navigating the Netflix interface was easy because that company understands TV apps.

Using YouTube by itself is the opposite of easy. Without a keyboard, it’s a complete pain. However, the best way to use YouTube on any large screen is through the use of a YouTube app. The Aquos paired with the app on my Android phone, allowing me to search on my phone’s keyboard and control the video from within the app. I could even create a queue of videos that played through the TV. Again, because the app developer had an idea of how people would use it.

The rest of the apps don’t understand this. Their clunky interfaces just put me off from using them. Whoever developed these apps needs to start thinking about ways to use TVs more effectively. No one wants to check their Facebook or Twitter feed on a giant screen, because those things were born on much smaller ones.

Perchance to dream

I’ll never own both it and what’s in it.

That giant screen, at the end of all things, proves there’s much to consider before buying a TV like this. In my time with it, I’ve learned that the younger me wanted a huge TV but didn’t realize what he was getting into. He saw a big TV with an awesome picture and a great sound system. In truth, it really is a wonderful TV for the younger me to have had.

But now, the grown up journalist that I am sees something different. My living room is big, but can’t accommodate the distance needed to optimally view content. Ambient light seeps in, distracting from the picture, regardless of its quality. My neck cranes upwards more than it should, forcing me to depress into my couch to feel more comfortable.

My income can’t afford a TV that retails for more than $4,000. The soundbar? Another $500. Sure, it all comes on sale at some time or another, and eventually will be cheaper, but technology will have moved on. It won’t be a great 70-inch TV, it’ll be a mediocre one at that point.

It’s just not practical. But is practicality what we’re searching for here? It’s a TV bigger than most of us will ever see in our lives. A size that delivers an impressive experience, even if the features weren’t the highest in its rare class. It’s unforgettable, owning something so large. To go back to my 46-inch Bravia will be a struggle, but we all have to wake up from dreams. Even if our living rooms look a little emptier.

Sometimes it’s the little things that have the biggest impact. It may not scream “hot-ticket item”, but after using D-Link’s Wireless Range Extender (DAP-1320), it’s clear how this device could greatly improve a home’s wireless network.

As you might have guessed, it extends the range of your current wireless network to places that may be far away from the router. In my house, the router is in a bedroom at one end and there are multiple devices (my PS3, Xbox, iPad, Android phone, etc.) that suffer in the living room from poor connection. It’s physics–you put a wall in front of a signal, it diminishes.

I used to think the only way to fix that was to get a stronger router. A big box with multiple antennae sticking out of it. But when I think of those routers, I think of the tooling around required to configure it and the agony of changing info on multiple internet-connected devices to recognize it.

Simple, small, and takes up only a single outlet.

So seeing this tiny, inconspicuous device caught me by surprise. No ports, no antennae–just something that looked like the business end of a charger. It weighs about 72 grams, and has three noticeable features. On the back, two prongs that plug into any wall socket. On the front, an LED that lets you know when it’s connected. Finally, on the left side, there’s a synchronization button.

Its simplicity in design is reflected in its operation. It wants the setup to be easy – hence giving you simple diagrams. If your existing router supports a Wi-Fi protected setup, the Range Extender connects with a push of a button. My router didn’t support WPS, so I had to manually connect. That may sound like the exact technical pain-in-the-ass that I wanted to avoid with a more complex router – but the only effort I had expended to this point was plugging it into the wall. No cables, no desk space or wall mounting.

A screenshot of the web user interface for the range extender.

I could even use my iPad’s browser to configure the network. As I mentioned, the instructions were very clear. I connected to the network the Range Extender creates and logged into a site. The site let me change the name of that network and its password to my existing network name and password.

Now I had, effectively, two wireless networks in my house in under 10 minutes. Since both had the same name and password, my devices connected to whichever signal was stronger. My PS3, for example, used to connect with a signal strength of 60%. With the Extender, the new signal strength was 100%. The PlayStation is a bad example as PSN is notorious for its constant dropouts/connectivity issues and annoying system updates. While the latter problem was solved (updates took a few minutes, rather than half an hour), the connectivity issues were still present. Something I don’t blame the Range Extender for because my iPad, Xbox and Galaxy Nexus had no issues.

Bottom figure: before installation. Middle figure: after installation. Top figure: example of HSPA+ network speed (at times faster than WiFi in my living room).

Using Speedtest.net’s application before installation, I noticed that my phone pulled down 1.9 Mbps in the living room. After installation, it jumped to 18 Mbps. Numbers aside, Netflix loaded faster and in better resolution, YouTube started instantaneously and FaceTime never dropped a call.

Perhaps that’s what I love most about this little tool. It just worked. It helped solve an annoyance without changing the way I used my technology. If you live in a small apartment or close quarters, you’re not going to get this device. But if you are constantly struggling for consistent signal strength between floors, D-Link’s Wireless Range Extender would be a tiny blessing.

It sells for $49.99 at retailers like Best Buy, Futureshop and London Drugs.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/review-d-link-wireless-range-extender-solves-your-signal-problems/feed1D-Link Wireless Range ExtenderanandramakrishnanSimple, small, and takes up only a single outlet. A screenshot of the web user interface for the range extender. Bottom figure: before installation. Middle figure: after installation. Top figure: example of HSPA+ network speed for comparison.Video review: TomTom VIA 1605TMhttp://o.canada.com/technology/review-tomtom-via-1605tm
http://o.canada.com/technology/review-tomtom-via-1605tm#commentsTue, 27 Nov 2012 05:31:00 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=157607]]>…

As an Android user, I’ll say it: The platform has problems. As a Canadian Android user, I’ll say one more thing: Our choices are limited if you want a true Android experience.

I’ve written at length about why I’m an Android user (I’m a guy who likes to tinker with things) but I know the experience can put off more casual users who just want a phone that looks good, works well and does everything it needs to do in this age of “see, want, get, share.”

So when I spent some time with Motorola’s RAZR HD LTE, I put aside my own peculiarities and tried to focus on whether this phone would be good for the average Canadian. To my surprise, the phone won’t just please the casual smartphone user – but tinkerers like me, too.

The look, the feel, the touch

The RAZR HD definitely is a sleek looking phone.

To put it bluntly, the RAZR HD isn’t the prettiest phone. In the U.S., it’s sold as the Droid RAZR HD because that term ‘Droid’ has been successful for carriers like Verizon. Verizon also uses pretty ‘masculine’ advertising to describe the device. Kevlar fibre coats the non-removable backing, giving it a smooth and scratch-resistant surface. Chevrons make it look like a tire tread. The 8 megapixel camera and speaker grill figure prominently on the back as well. On the front, a tough Gorilla Glass display and a wide notification light fit under a Motorola emblem.

Along the sides, similar to the iPhone 4’s design, there’s a dull metal band. On the right, both the volume rocker and power button are thin slivers of raised metal that look very industrial, but never failed to register a press. On the left, sit the micro-USB port for charging and a mini HDMI port for hooking up to external displays. There’s also a thin slot for the SIM card and external storage (which can be opened with a handy tool provided in the box). On the bottom, two screws at either end. On top, a headphone port that’s partly housed in the band and partly in the back panel.

If all of that sounds like a messy design, that’s because it is. It’s also a strange shape; not perfectly rectangular with not perfectly rounded edges. The only compliment I’ll give the body is that it’s very solid to hold in your hand–you don’t feel like you’re going to drop it or break it, despite it only being a third of a pound.

Ok, now turn it on

It’s also a big phone. At 4.7 inches diagonally, the screen might prove too big for smaller hands, but I never had a problem navigating it with just one. Make no mistake, it’s a brilliant display.

There’s something I don’t quite understand, though. If I may get a little technical, the screen is a Super AMOLED HD Display, outputting a 720p resolution (like most TVs a few years ago). I personally use a Galaxy Nexus as my phone, a device sold nearly a year before the RAZR HD. It has exactly the same specifications and yet, side by side, the RAZR HD was brighter. When I put both phones on automatic brightness, it seems the RAZR HD thought the exact same lighting conditions warranted a brighter setting than the Galaxy Nexus.

The colours were vibrant and videos looked incredible on that screen. Watching high-def YouTube trailers of Grand Theft Auto 5 and World War Z was fantastic. Details looked crisp and the average eye won’t see any pixels–even if some reviewers act like children at a flea circus about that. If the design of the phone was a flaw, the screen is its saviour.

Deep, deep inside.

If you’re running that screen at full brightness, don’t worry, the RAZR boasts all-day battery power. Don’t be fooled by talk times or hours of video/music playing – you want to know whether a phone can take you through multiple tasks in a given day. My day’s worth of testing took me to 19 hours and 28 minutes before I had to charge it. I watched at least an hour on YouTube, streamed music and podcasts, browsed Twitter/Facebook/Chrome and took a few calls. The 2530 milliampere-hour battery is bigger than standard smartphones in the same class, mainly because of LTE (which we’ll get to later).

An image of my morning cereal.

Inside, the RAZR HD is running a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor. What that means is that it’s fast enough to run whatever apps you could possibly throw at it. There’s 16 GBs of space onboard and you can get up to 32 GBs more with a microSD card. The speaker is very loud–louder than any other phone I’ve used. Which is great when you’re alone in the car blasting music (One Direction, of course) but not great when you get a phone call at work (also: One Direction).

“HDR” shot of poorly-named Tetley tea.

As mentioned, it has an 8 megapixel camera at the back and shoots 1080p video. There’s also a 1.3 megapixel camera at the front for video calls on Skype or Google Talk/Hangouts. But if you know anything about cameras, you know that megapixels mean nothing. The pictures taken on the RAZR HD won’t win over an iPhone 5 or a Nokia Lumia 920. Some colours seemed inaccurate when shooting in any lighting condition–though the brighter the area you’re in, the better your picture clarity.

Normal shot of badly named Tetley teas.

I have to mention the HDR setting in the camera–which basically takes each photo in different exposure levels and combines it all into a very aesthetically-pleasing shot. I ended up taking several photos in this mode just because I preferred what it did to my pictures over standard shots. However, that’s not proper picture fidelity. When the exposure is altered and combined, you’re still not getting an accurate representation of the image you’re shooting.

Neither of these shots captured the appropriate green of the magazine header.

A tastier ice cream sandwich

That HDR mode isn’t part of normal Android 4.0 (codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich–Google names its operating system versions after desserts).

Why aren’t the features the same across all Android phones? To explain it simply, Android’s biggest problem, in my opinion, is that everyone who sells it wants something different. The software maker (Google) wants people to use it. The manufacturer (Motorola) wants people to use it but only on their hardware. The carrier (Rogers) wants you to use it on hardware they carry and tied to their services. Each one changes Android’s skin in different ways, removing the original simplicity under the guise of improving the experience.

I’ve used ‘stock’ 4.0 and the improvements that Motorola has made in the RAZR HD are helpful while being subtle. The lock screen, for instance, has four quick access options that take you to the camera, dialer and text messages. There’s even a handy on-screen button to switch to silent mode.

The icons are a little gaudy, but don’t detract from the underlying design. Swipe to the left for easy access to settings. Swipe to the right to add a pane for more applications. Open the app drawer, and you get a customizable favourites tab. It’s an improvement over the stock ICS app drawer, which suffered from too much scrolling.

My “Meeting Rule” on Smart Actions.

Usually, when a manufacturer adds an app to your device, it’s something you never want or use. Not the case with Motorola’s “Smart Actions.” As you use it, the phone “suggests” new ways of automating your phone to do things under certain conditions. For example, I set up a “Meeting Rule.” From 12:15 to 1:15, the phone would be set to vibrate and automatically send a text message to any callers telling them I was in a meeting. Other rules can be set to a wide number of “triggers” including location, calendar events and low battery to name a few.

However, even if a manufacturer improves a device, a carrier comes along and pre-loads what’s known as bloatware. In this case, it’s a bunch of Rogers apps that just take up real estate in your app drawer. ICS allows you to disable them, thankfully.

It should be pointed out that Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) is now two versions behind, even if it looks exactly like the latest version of Android, Jelly Bean (4.2). It has been promised, at some point, that this phone will be upgraded to Jelly Bean but that’s an Android problem – not the fault of the RAZR HD LTE.

Born to run

Using speedtest.net’s mobile app.

Those last three letters are another important feature. The RAZR HD on Rogers can access their LTE network, which is the fastest mobile speeds you can get in this country. In my testing, I was blown away by how fast: 5 MBs per second in some areas (downloading). That’s faster than Wi-Fi at my house, at times. Streaming a video started instantaneously on LTE, while downloading a podcast was done before I finished looking at a Jaguar outside my bus window.

But coverage dropped in and out throughout my testing. All areas were still faster than 3G/HSPA+ (the technology before LTE) but I never knew when I was covered. And elevators seemed to completely rob the phone of its connection.

Here in Toronto, Rogers covers most of the city with LTE, but people in more remote areas may not have access. You might think of it as an important consideration when buying this phone. If you can’t utilize its faster capabilities, why should you buy an LTE phone? Because it’s probably going to come to your area if you live in a city at one point or another. Furthermore, if you run the RAZR HD on 3G/HSPA+, the battery will last even longer.

LTE won’t cost you anything extra if you have a smartphone plan, but be aware that because things download quicker, you may not think about how much data you’re using. In just a few days of testing, I’ve racked up (intentionally) close to 2 GBs. There is no “unlimited” data cap, folks. You’ll get what you want faster, but you’ll still only get the same amount unless you pay more.

RAZR RVEW RPUP (HD LTE 4.0.4)

So should you buy the Motorola RAZR HD LTE this holiday season? Let’s compare. It costs 100 bucks on a three-year contract with Rogers. For 100 dollars more, you could get an iPhone 5, which has LTE, incredible hardware design, boring software design and probably won’t ship in time. Or you could get a Samsung Galaxy S3 or Note 2, which are bigger, more expensive and so far removed from an original Android experience that you might as well consider them a different operating system. You could also get the Nokia Lumia 920. It has a better camera and runs Windows Phone 8, which lacks the breadth of applications that Android has.

This is an HDR shot of my hand holding a coin, possibly a metaphor for the uncertainty of Android. Probably just a dirty dime.

If I were in the market for a new Android phone, this would be my best bet because of a great screen, solid battery life and useful software functionality. However, Android is a beast that too many people are trying to control – and the RAZR HD LTE is just a little better off than the pack.

As the holiday shopping season rages on, Anand Ram will be reviewing a few items for your consideration. Remember, even if the product isn’t what you want, there’s something you might learn about the category being reviewed!

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/personal-tech/holiday-gifts-motorola-razr-hd-lte-review/feed0RAZRHDLTE_Dyn_R_horiz_YouTube_ROWanandramakrishnanRazr HD Press ShotMy morning cerealTetleys HDRTetleys normalNormal vs HDRLock ScreenSmart ActionsBloatwareLTE SpeedHDR coinXbox SmartGlass lets you control your console from your smartphonehttp://o.canada.com/technology/xbox-smartglass-controlling-your-console-from-your-smartphone
http://o.canada.com/technology/xbox-smartglass-controlling-your-console-from-your-smartphone#commentsSat, 27 Oct 2012 23:33:51 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=138177]]>The success of Microsoft’s Xbox is undoubtedly because it’s not just a gaming console. My parents can watch a World War 2 documentary on Netflix and my niece can come over and play Fruit Ninja Kinect because the Xbox tries to offer something for everyone.

Enter the latest way it’s integrating our digital lives: SmartGlass. Introduced at this year’s E3 event, Xbox SmartGlass is a way to use your phone or tablet to control and augment what you see on your TV. It just became available for free on Google Play and the Windows Phone store.

Naturally, flawless cooperation in this world is idealism at its finest – and by that I mean SmartGlass has some bold ideas. Watch Game of Thrones on your Xbox and look at your tablet for a map of Westeros. Control your dashboard from your phone, even searching Bing without typing one-letter at a time. Manage your avatar, check your achievements and get an Xbox experience on the go.

I’m particularly proud of my classic South Indian old man avatar.

Of course, some things work and some things don’t. Integration is great, but it leaves a lot of people out and those who are included can be left wanting. Firstly, there’s no iOS version. Right now, it’s only for Windows Phone devices, Windows 8 and Android devices running 4.0 and higher. If you fall into any of those categories, you’re probably in the minority.

For those who can get it, however, there are some valuable features to SmartGlass. When you get the app, you sign in to your Xbox live account and it automatically detects your console. It even gives you helpful videos to show you how to use the app.

It’s smooth and looks like modern Windows style – that ‘Metro’ design that no one is supposed to call ‘Metro’ anymore. It even makes Xbox noises. Also, when not connected to an Xbox, it still works. Swiping between panes will let you search Bing, see your avatar, friends, achievements and messages, access recent Xbox applications and check out new movies or games. Whatever you do within the app always has the ability to “Play on Xbox.” It’s not just finding a game or movie, it’s launching it from your phone onto your Xbox. It’s a lot like Apple’s iTunes and Airplay put together.

Netflix details on the left, an example of the remote on the right.

When connected, you can navigate your console. The remote is 3 big buttons and an area in the centre as a trackpad. Tap once to select things, swipe your fingers to move. It works really well, even on a mobile connection (though WiFi is better). When playing something, such as a movie on Netflix, you can pause, skip or rewind from your phone.

The issue with SmartGlass is that it feels like an “app.” You’re splitting your attention between something you’re using on a screen and another screen. If you close the app, you have to reconnect to the Xbox–so it’s a remote you have to pay attention to. In my short time with it, I wanted to use my controller; which was faster and less likely to lose connection.

Also, it’s an Android app that looks like a Windows Phone app. The design just doesn’t fit, making for small on-screen buttons and menu systems that the user will have to figure out. Oh, and it only works in portrait orientation (at least on my Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean).

I liked the ability to type on my Xbox from my phone, but let’s make something clear: I don’t search the internet on my Xbox, let alone use Internet Explorer. I tried to go to YouTube, Gmail and just search news using SmartGlass, and the only thing I liked about web browsing was the dedicated scroll bar while using IE. Signing into things was a mess of switching between remote and typing, and the lack of Flash made it quite difficult to visit certain websites. Also, they tout pinch to zoom, but who needs to pinch to zoom on a TV screen that’s, in most cases, bigger than any computer you use?

SmartGlass also needs more applications that make use of it. Like most of Microsoft’s strategies these days, it seems to be a Field of Dreams situation, where they want developers to come once they build the infrastructure. Unfortunately though, that doesn’t bode well for users right now.

While it could be better, I do see its usefulness. I started off by saying that the Xbox is being used by people who don’t only play games. My dad doesn’t know how to work an Xbox controller, but he handles his Nexus S quite well. My cousins don’t have cable, but they use their phones to control their home theatre system hooked up to their Xbox. SmartGlass could be very useful to them.

So if you think it will make your Xbox experience better or easier, check it out.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/xbox-smartglass-controlling-your-console-from-your-smartphone/feed3SmartGlass Feature ImageanandramakrishnanSmartGlass pic 1SmartGlass pic 2Songza hits 1 million Canadian usershttp://o.canada.com/technology/songza-hits-1-million-canadian-users
http://o.canada.com/technology/songza-hits-1-million-canadian-users#commentsWed, 17 Oct 2012 18:07:56 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=130558]]>Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of tweets and Facebook posts about Songza. Whether they like the “Ambient Music for Reading” playlist or having a short dance party at work, the free music service is clearly reaching people.

At least 1 million of them so far.

Songza announced that it has a million registered users – 70 days after the service launched. Before Songza became available in Canada, I talked to CEO Elias Roman and thought his company offered an interesting product. It allows users to listen to specially curated playlists, streamed directly to their smartphone, on Android or iOS, of their PC.

I had my doubts because I didn’t like being told what music to listen to. The more I used it, however, the more I realized it really did give you choice. It asked you about your mood. In our chat, Roman talked about how they compiled research to find out what any given user on a certain device was doing at a point in the day, and what kind of music they wanted to accent that activity.

Over time, I didn’t want to just figure out my mood, I wanted to use Songza to learn about music. The other day, I listened to “Getting To Know You: Stravinsky.” As I write this, I’m listening to “Classic Rock Summer.” According to the numbers, I’m not alone.

Canadians have streamed songs from the service more than 160 million times. The average visit was longer than Americans, but just like our neighbours to the south, we all wanted to be “Mellow”, the most popular choice when browsing by mood. On iOS (iPad, iPod touch and iPhone), Songza has been installed more than 900,000 times. That’s no small feat for a free app that doesn’t have any intrusive audio ads.

The service isn’t perfect. On my Galaxy Nexus, I’ve definitely had force closures of the app. It misbehaves occasionally and doesn’t respond to my skip requests. Searching on Android is two levels deep. Tracking my data usage shows that Songza eats up quite a chunk if I’m not careful. On the other side of that argument, is the fact that the songs sound amazing. Certain files also use the appropriate stereo information instead of providing a simple mixdown.

Minor gripes aside, it’s amazing how frequently I’ve started using Songza during my days. I’ve even had my iPad next to me streaming the sounds of the ocean as I went to bed (using the handy sleep timer feature).

It seems like a lot of Canadians like Songza too.

So what are your favourite playlists on Songza? How do you use it? What do you like and not like about it?

That’s what Eric Cheng, Director of Photography at Lytro, said to me about his company’s light field camera. In the age of Facebook, multiple pictures tell the story of one moment. With the Lytro camera – many stories are told in one picture.

Cheng and I sat in the restaurant of a downtown Toronto hotel to talk about the camera, now available in Canada. The demonstration wasn’t helped by the low light and orange glow of the place but thankfully, the bright ideas behind Lytro shone through.

“Lytro designs, manufactures and sells the first consumer light-field camera.” Cheng explained. “Plates, film, digital cameras all capture the same fundamental information–that two-dimensional slice of the light field. If you can retain the light at every point of capture, which is what light-field cameras do, it is multi-dimensional data.”

The basics of the technology may seem beyond the reach of an average consumer (and even a little abstract) but they’re interesting. Essentially, most cameras don’t keep the information of the direction of light coming into a lens. The light-field camera uses that information to create a “living picture” that can be refocused after you take it.

About the size of your hand. The weight of a video game controller.

Lytro’s founder, Dr. Ren Ng, found a way to take initial research prototypes of light-field technology – the size of a small room – and bring it down to the size of your hand. Cheng went to school with Ng, studying computer science.

“Both of us discovered photography in different ways. He went the research route and I left the software industry and became a photographer and publisher.” He joined Lytro later to bridge the gap between the technology and photography.

When Cheng showed me the camera, I thought it looked like a square spyglass. Weighing about the same as your average point-and-shoot digital camera, it houses thousands of microlenses, along with a light field sensor. The body is made of anodized aluminum and rubber, with a big lens at the front and a touchscreen viewfinder at the back. It’s very secure – you never feel like you’re going to drop or break it.

One of the guiding principles for design was to avoid looking at how cameras were designed. The result is a very consumer-friendly device. There are only two physical buttons, both of which wake the device from sleep. A power button on the underside of the rubber grip and a shutter button at the top. Sliding your finger along the top of the rubber controls the 8x zoom lens, which can be a bit finicky.

To take a picture, you point and press the shutter button. Cheng boasted the camera’s non-existent shutter lag, which falls below the rapid succession of some professional cameras, but well above the average point-and-shoot. It’s also very impressive in low-light situations. The key to understanding this camera is to know that it’s not taking your average picture.

The on-camera interface is quite friendly. Swiping from the left of the touchscreen brings up the most recently taken photos. You can tap on a photo to have the camera focus on different parts of the image. You can even place a star on photos that you want uploaded first. The camera has tight controls over the exposure, shutter speed and ISO sensitivity. But these features are not the problem.

While the touchscreen itself is very responsive, it’s a dismal 1.5 inch-diagonal display that’s pretty unusable at certain viewing angles. The resolution is also poor, bordering on untrustworthy. It’s impossible to know whether you’ve taken a good shot until you bring it back to your computer.

The software makes it easy to upload and share.

But when you do bring it back, that’s where this camera shows its worth. The camera auto-installs Lytro’s desktop software, which is available for both Mac and PC. It’s a minor gripe, but you need Snow Leopard for the former and only 64-bit users of the latter are able to run the software.

You need it to view the photos, which are stored in Lytro’s proprietary .lfp file format. It uploads and charges via micro USB cable, and each image file comes in at approximately 16 MB, comparable to RAW photo formats.

Lytro’s software is great because it’s super responsive and easy to use. Double clicking a photo opens it up, allowing you to click anywhere on that photo to refocus your image. It’s still a living image, clicking somewhere doesn’t change the focus for good. The interactivity is part of what makes these light-field camera shots so much fun.

The picture ends up being 1080 by 1080 pixels. Small, by any stretch of modern digital camera specifications, but impressive when you realize you can play with the image.

Go on, play with the images below. Click on different areas.

Through the software, you can upload these photos to Facebook, Twitter and Google+, embed them onto your Tumblr or personal blog, and even view them on mobile browsers. Impressively, all of the refocusing abilities remain intact in each of these cases. They really want their pictures viewed in a way that takes advantage of the camera’s abilities–which is why exporting a picture to a JPG is not an advertised way of sharing (but is possible by right-clicking a photo).

That interactive viewing experience, Cheng believes, needs to be taken into consideration when using the Lytro camera.

“This is what takes a bit of learning from users. At full wide, the range is pretty much 5 or 6 inches in front of the camera to very far away. It’s a large range. For pictures that are successful in terms of having a lot of refocus, you have to place objects in the front of the range and the back of the range.”

That shooting can give a “revealing” experience to the photos. The more refocus your picture has, the more fun it is for the viewer to play around with. On Lytro.com, there are so many user images that share parts of a story captured in one moment.

I initially thought this camera would be great for amateurs who didn’t always focus their shots properly. After spending a few days with it, I realized that it can be used by professional artists to create really great interactive moments.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an amateur or a professional, though. You still need quite a bit of money for this camera. The base model has 8 GBs of storage for $399 (available in graphite and blue), and a 16 GB version is $499 (in a deep red). Along with accessories like a tripod mount and case, it will all be available online starting Friday exclusively at Future Shop.

Despite a high price point, a low image resolution and proprietary software, the Lytro camera still one of the most interesting products I’ve used in a long time. As I sat and talked with Cheng, I was really distracted by this wonderful gadget in front of me. I wanted to hold it, to take pictures with it, and share the pictures so that people can play with them. As I used it, it felt like any other camera and with the appropriate training, I know I could create something brilliant with it.

The future of this technology also impressed me. Cheng told me that the camera takes in so much information, that refocusing is only the beginning. In his words, they’re still “unlocking the abilities of what light field can do.” In future software updates, he showed me the ability to control perspective of the photo and the ability to put the entire image in focus, instead of one area.

These features have that “wow” factor, and it’s all aimed at the average consumer.

Lytro has had interest from film directors, professionals in medical imaging and even law enforcement agencies. Imagine the freedom for a director to let his performers move throughout a scene without worrying to hit their marks. Imagine being able see the detail and depth of internal organs all at once.

The potential here is beyond a gimmick, rooted in a technology that can help the everyday photographer unlock more of what they’re shooting.

Even their own surprisingly detailed stubble.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/personal-tech/lytro-camera-review-light-field-tech-helps-refocus-pictures/feed0IMG_20121005_105721anandramakrishnanLytro camera in handLytro camera and boxLytro upload screenPatrick Collison and Stripe want to help your business onlinehttp://o.canada.com/technology/patrick-collison-and-stripe-wants-to-help-your-business-online
http://o.canada.com/technology/patrick-collison-and-stripe-wants-to-help-your-business-online#commentsThu, 20 Sep 2012 01:53:13 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=113642]]>Stripe isn’t a company that consumers would know right away, but it means something big to Silicon Valley insiders.

After starting less than a year ago, the 32-member team has now pulled in $38 million in financing and are presenting themselves as a real alternative to PayPal in the online payments space.

And the company’s first international venture is to Canada.

Stripe is a service that helps businesses accept credit card payments on their websites. Sounds a lot like PayPal, eh? But when big names like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk (PayPal’s co-founders, incidentally, and early investors in Facebook) are invested in Stripe, the company must be doing something right.

The way CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison sees it, Stripe offers something much faster, simpler and facilitates a closer connection between the merchant and the customer. He sees the Internet’s current treatment of online payment as restrictive.

During my chat with the 24-year-old, he admitted this wasn’t an easy problem to fix, but he’s hoping Stripe can do it.

Q: What is Stripe, in your own words?

Patrick Collison: Stripe is the easiest way to accept payments online. We’re trying to make it easier for people to start businesses on the internet. It was so hard to start accepting payments over the internet before Stripe. People had to go through weeks of filling out paper forms and applying to merchant account providers, talking to banks, gateways – this really sort of Byzantine and archaic infrastructure.

Stripe replaces all of that. You can start accepting payments online, instantaneously. You can launch your business immediately. The single biggest piece of feedback we got since we launched Stripe was “This is great, I love Stripe, but you really need to make it available outside of the U.S.”

I was in Kenya last week, in Nairobi, and I met a bunch of Kenyan entrepreneurs. They were showing me what they were building and they were describing how it is literally impossible for them to start accepting payments online. Which, when you take a step back and think about it, if this was the case in the real world–it would almost be a civil rights issue that all of these people aren’t able to participate in the economy. Somehow, for some reason, we don’t pay as much attention to it on the internet. And so we really want to fix that.

Q: Why the move into Canada?

Patrick Collison: A combination of things. I grew up in Ireland, but lived in Canada for a year. So, I guess I’ve experienced some of the pain that people have to go through [in terms of this] in Canada. It’s also one of the countries people requested most since we launched. We got inquiries every single day about when we would be available in Canada.

Patrick Collison, CEO and co-founder of Stripe

But I think Canada’s an interesting market, much more so than the US, because the ability to accept payments online in Canada before Stripe was so limited. The market was dominated by a small number of incumbents. It took people literally months to get a merchant account.

We had a beta running in Canada since the start of the summer. We’ve been working with companies like Metalab, a pretty well-known design studio in Victoria. Shopify, which is, I guess, the fastest-growing and probably largest technology startup in Canada. Tarsnap, which is a backup service based out of Vancouver. And all of the companies have been at pains to emphasize, when you’re talking to people, make sure you make clear to them how painful accepting payments was in Canada before Stripe.

Toby, the CEO of Shopify, was making the case to me that the reason the Canadian startup sector is as small as it is today is because it’s so hard for these companies to generate revenue, so hard for them to receive payments online–from any customer.
Q: Let’s get into the small business side. If I’m a small business owner, what do I get from Stripe?

Patrick Collison: What you get from Stripe is the ability to payments-enable your website in under half an hour. You drop a couple lines of code onto your webpage, that puts a credit card form right there on your webpage–that enables anyone in the world with a credit card or debit card to pay on your website.

It enables you to go from scratch to being able to receive payments from really anywhere in the world in under half an hour. This is the first time this has been available to Canadians.

Q: If I’m a small business owner that doesn’t know much about selling online, what are you offering to educate me on how to use Stripe effectively?

Patrick Collison: So we have a lot of documentation, we provide incredibly good support. In addition to that, we work with a lot of companies that build services on top of Stripe. For example, we work with Shopify. If you want to use Shopify to get a pre-built store and then use Stripe for the payments, that’s really easy to do.

We also work with (Ontario-based) ShopLocket. They’re basically…a really easy way to make a landing page for your product. And again, Stripe can be used to integrate the payments into that.

Q: Sites like Shopify and ShopLocket, they use competitors of yours too. What would motivate small businesses to use, say, Shopify AND use you for the payment?

Patrick Collison: Two things, really. One is that using Stripe yields the best customer experience. If you were to use something else… there are a couple of services that you can set up pretty easily, but the experience for the customer is that they’re redirected to some other website, where they have to sign up for an account, then they’re eventually redirected back. This all happens as part of the checkout process. With Stripe, you enter your credit card number right there, on the website.

This actually makes a huge difference to how much revenue you’ll generate at the end of the day. Among a segment of users that we looked a – that switched from this off-page redirect checkout to an integrated on-page Stripe checkout – the average increase in their revenues was 47% in the months subsequent. It’s a much better exchange for customers that translates into more revenue for the business.

The second reason is that Stripe makes it much easier to manage your business on an ongoing basis. We provide really powerful analytics, this gorgeous dashboard interface…all things equal, even if you didn’t generate more revenue, Stripe is a simpler and effective tool to use.

Q: And do you see your price point as attractive here in Canada?

Patrick Collison: The pricing is a major pain point for a lot of companies. The industry, in general, one of the big problems with it was that the pricing was so opaque and complicated.

What kind of prevailed before Stripe was setup fees, monthly fees, card storage fees, PCI fees, recurring billing fees and this crazy fee whether the card was a corporate card or a rewards card or an international card, whatever else. Very few businesses even knew what they were paying. Stripe is only a single fee. We charge 2.9% plus 30 cents for every successful charge, and that means we only get money when our users make money.

Q: I’ve known someone who’s worked in online payment for 15 years. Your website says Stripe avoids certain industry regulations–what does that mean for the merchant? Are they in charge of maintaining PCI compliance?

Patrick Collison: We have some security requirements as part of Stripe. For example, the payment form must be hosted on an encrypted page with SSL. So long as you’re compliant with Stripe’s security requirements, we’re able to handle the rest of PCI compliance. A lot of that is enabled by Stripe.js, which is our technology that means a credit card is submitted directly from a customer’s web browser to Stripe’s secure servers. The credit card never actually touches the website’s servers.

We’re certified and audited to PCI service provider Level 1, which is the most stringent level of certification available. And in general, we don’t think every small business should have to become a world-class security expert to accept payments online. That doesn’t make sense. What we want to do is shift as much of the burden as possible onto Stripe, and then we can centralize and organize all of that knowledge and then provide much better security for everyone.Q: How do you deal with customer support?

Patrick Collison: At Stripe, we have email and live chat support, like many other companies. Unlike them, however, everyone who does support is technical, so you don’t have to go through some sort of escalation to reach someone who can really solve your problem.

Also, most everybody at Stripe does support, including myself. We all take turns to do support on a day-by-day basis, which means everyone is familiar with the actual issues that our users run into. And that directly influences the direction which we go with the product.

Q: You’ve said that you’re tackling the “economic infrastructure of the internet.” What do you see as broken in that infrastructure and how will Stripe fix it?

Patrick Collison: It’s a trifecta of problems. One is that it’s so hard to start accepting payments online in many areas. On a country by country basis, we’re going and fixing that. We want to make it easier to start a business on the internet.

Secondly, when you are running a business, your customer base is still limited in that you’re always accepting a single payment instrument. You’re not kind of accepting payments on the internet. If you launch a business on the internet tomorrow and you start accepting credit cards – you really are just accepting payments from a small minority of internet users. Which is not what you want. You’d like to start accepting payments from anyone on the internet, but because of the restrictions in the infrastructure, you’re just receiving payments from a small fraction.

And thirdly, from the end-user standpoint, you’re really limited in who you can buy from. Let’s say you’re a Canadian with a credit card, you can’t buy from Chinese companies, from African companies, from even many European companies, again because of the many limitations of the payment instrument.

It has this sort of chilling effect on the internet. It’s sort of like trade barriers. We work really hard in the real world to make sure goods and services can flow freely around the world, but we have this really needless and harmful barrier on the internet. Given how inherently global the internet is… we just don’t see that on an economic basis, and that’s really what we want to solve with Stripe.

Q: I always ask this question, is there a difference between the way your service is offered in the US and here in Canada?

Patrick Collison: That’s an important question to ask! There’s no difference. We’re making exactly the same service available to Canadians that we’re making for Americans. We did not want to partner with some company in Canada and duct-tape a product together and call that a Canadian launch.

It was a sold-out house on Saturday at the Sony Centre, for a touring symphony that was in town. You may have expected people in formal wear, an older crowd, lovers of orchestral music.

You would have been wrong. There were some, but they were the minority.

This show was all about the young men dressed as Link–pointy hats, green tunics and large foam Master Swords in tow. It was about the girls with bright blonde hair, adorned in pink, like the titular princess. The fans who proudly wore the Triforce, emblazoned across their shirts.

It was a night to celebrate the music of The Legend of Zelda.

Symphony of the Goddesses was borne out of the latest iteration in the iconic Zelda franchise, Skyward Sword. To mark the 25th anniversary of the series, Nintendo released a CD alongside it that had orchestral interpretations of classic themes. That spawned a worldwide tour that made its way to Toronto last Saturday. And what a performance it was.

The decades of music are the work of Koji Kondo and his team, but the touring symphony was the brainchild of Creative Director and Producer Jeron Moore and Music Director Chad Seiter, who arranged the music as well. Moore was also responsible for the video screen above the orchestra, which played curated gameplay footage from many titles.

The orchestra was all Canadian, including the wonderful and vibrant conductor Eímear Noone. A wonderful mix of strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion made up the bulk of the stage, with the wonderful addition of harp and male/female choir vocals for that classic Zelda feel.

The night was divided into four movements, and each one had special memories for the people in the crowd. It started with a prelude, to invite people into some of the themes that have been a part of Zelda for quite a long time. The first movement was devoted to one of the most iconic Zelda games, Ocarina of Time. Hearing ‘The Song of Time’, ‘Kakariko Village’ and a medley of the dungeons of Hyrule brought so many memories flooding back (literally, because the Water Temple was a terrible experience for most!)

The second movement was devoted to The Wind Waker. The music, in a word, was incredible. The violins played so softly, bringing alive the feeling of the sea air. Eímear Noone even brought out a replica of the Wind Waker itself, a baton used in the game. That kind of detail and fan service proves what kind of a love letter to the series this tour is.

The third movement was devoted to Twilight Princess. Being a darker game than most, the deep brass and whine of the clarinet brought out an other-worldly suspense. Even the final boss battle was worked in there, which is just a four part slug-fest with the series’ main villain, Ganon.

The final movement was all about A Link to the Past. This game is two decades old and its music was nowhere close to being orchestral at the time. But the way it was translated from its 8-bit roots really showed how well Kondo-san wrote the original cues.

For all its formality, the crowd loved every minute of it. Though the musicians may not have ever touched a video game, let alone a Zelda title, their enthusiasm and ability to bring that music to adoring fans was appreciated. Never had I seen a bassoonist get such raucous, unabashed applause. I didn’t even feel two hours go by. There were three encores that night: ‘Ballad of the Wind Fish’, ‘Gerudo Valley’ and the Majora’s Mask suite. The crowd lost their minds at the mere hint of each one. If I may editorialize, you haven’t heard Gerudo Valley until you’ve heard an orchestra perform it.

It was in the quiet moments of excitement in the crowd’s eyes that proved the worth of having a concert like this. The fist pumps at recognized themes, the audible gasps of excitement, the laughs at Moore’s jokes as he emceed. Then there were the smiles. The smiles that wouldn’t remove themselves as the screen showed moments from every gamer’s past. Whether young or old, there was a Zelda game that touched the audience in some meaningful way.

It really felt like something that was not to be missed. The CD, unfortunately, is only available if you purchase Skyward Sword. But if you want to catch the show, it’s still touring North America until December. Check out the schedule here.

This isn’t the first time a group of musicians has put together a cool video game themed performance though.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/the-legend-of-zelda-celebrating-25-years-of-music/feed0Symphony at playanandramakrishnanThe BBC iPlayer App: Robust, reliable and reasonably pricedhttp://o.canada.com/technology/the-bbc-iplayer-app-for-ios-review
http://o.canada.com/technology/the-bbc-iplayer-app-for-ios-review#commentsSun, 12 Aug 2012 18:18:11 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=91755]]>British television. On this side of the world, it’s generally used in the sentence “Yeah, but the British original was better.” Years ago, you couldn’t even say you liked the American version of The Office without some purist jamming the original down your throat. Well, with the global BBC iPlayer App for iOS, you can stop fighting. Or you can shove it back down someone else’s throat.

Note: This review is for the iPad version of the app. It is available for iPhone and iPod Touch as well.

On the surface, it’s a very simple app. The majority of the screen is taken up by a carousel of content, that you can swipe through. At the bottom, you can sort the entire library by Genre, Just In and alphabetically. At the top, a search and settings button to adjust parental lock and video quality, which is very helpful because of the wide range of content for all ages.

That content is the best feature of this app. It really puts focus on the fact that it has tons of shows and wants to keep you constantly jumping from one to the other. Documentaries, comedies (both old and new), dramas, period pieces, talk shows and children’s shows–all will keep you busy. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to educate yourself on some of the most classic BBC shows (and shut that friend up who won’t stop raving about old BBC comedies).

For example, the hardcore Doctor Who fan can find episodes from many of the original seasons. Disappointingly, none of the new ones were available (except for two episodes with David Tennant). The classic comedy lover will laugh at seasons of Blackadder, Fawlty Towers and A Bit of Fry and Laurie. And the people who like crime thrillers get shows like Luther and Sherlock. Just a few of the multitude of choices, all with wonderful descriptions of episodes and cast members. The downside is that not everything is available, as I assume some exclusivity needs to be maintained for BBC television viewers. So you won’t get all seasons of new shows, but there are updates to content regularly.

When you watch an episode, there are no ads (but for a tiny 3 second BBC sting off the top and bottom) and you have the option of streaming low and high quality. It also has the handy feature of downloading entire episodes in a queue, so long as you have the storage space.

The controls inside the video are a bit small, making volume and scrubbing imprecise, but it’s not a major flaw. Naturally, if you’ve left an episode, it will resume playback from the point at which you last viewed it. The app supports Airplay mirroring, so you can send it to a bigger screen if you’d like. It may seem redundant to say, but the overall video experience for an app that exclusively has video content, is great. No hiccups or streaming issues on Wi-Fi.

It’s also a wonderful opportunity to educate yourself on some of the most classic BBC shows (and shut that friend up who won’t stop raving about old BBC comedies).

That simplicity is what makes it a great app. Content is king, but royalty comes at a price. In Canada, it’s 9 dollars a month, discounted to 85 dollars if you pay for a year. The obvious decision is whether you like BBC content enough to subscribe. The selection is wide enough that you’ll find something you like, and some of the content is brilliant enough to make you like it. In our increasingly cable TV-free, streaming-only world, it’s not a bad option.

Also, you get to shut people up by saying “Yeah, I saw the original. Characters were great, but it just doesn’t relate to audiences here as much.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/the-bbc-iplayer-app-for-ios-review/feed0SherlockanandramakrishnanThe OfficeDoctor WhoA bit of Fry and LaurieSongza’s Elias Roman wants to provide the music for every moodhttp://o.canada.com/technology/songzas-elias-roman-wants-to-provide-the-music-for-every-mood
http://o.canada.com/technology/songzas-elias-roman-wants-to-provide-the-music-for-every-mood#commentsMon, 06 Aug 2012 01:59:06 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=87573]]>On Tuesday, a new music service will be available in Canada called Songza, but this one is a little different than most.

The company doesn’t see itself as a way to buy and manage music. Instead, they consider themselves a lifestyle company that uses music to help you achieve the things you do in your day through the power of music. If it sounds a little different than your Rdios and your Spotifys, that’s because it is. And it’s not obscure. They’ve had hundreds of thousands of downloads after launching mobile apps in the U.S.

I had a chat with Elias Roman, CEO and co-founder of Songza. He isn’t new to the digital music service scene. The first offering was for the retail space, something that he and partners eventually sold off to Amazon. His next venture was Songza.

I asked him what this service was all about and what it brings to Canadians.

What is Songza, in your own words?

We’re a music concierge. And what that means is we have expertly curated playlists for anything you can imagine. And we make it really easy to find the right one at the right time.

The theory behind that is that music is our favourite thing as a team. We think the right music at the right time makes whatever it is you’re actually doing better. And so Songza’s mission is to make that happen for more people, more of the time.

Music is personal, but also social. How does Songza approach it?

We’re particularly excited about music as a social experience, but not just online. Offline, as well. One of my favourite pieces of feedback is we have a whole section of playlists dedicated to “Girls Night Out”, that period of getting of ready, that two hours before you actually go out.

And so we got this great piece of feedback from a young lady who had been using one of our “Girls Night Out” playlists to get ready. She wrote in the next morning saying, “It was the best getting ready session we ever had. My friends loved the playlists–they liked it so much I pretended it was mine! It was like getting takeout and telling everyone I had cooked.”

So that’s just part of the social discovery process that happens offline that we love to be a part of.

Your service is all about these playlists, that are curated by experts. Who are they?

We have 2 very different types of experts that we work with. One more on the lifestyle end and one on the music end. So we have about 25 music experts that we work with on any given day, and these are DJs, music critics, professional musicians, ethnomusicologists–by and large, people who do music professionally. They’re working with us to create the best playlists for “Margaritaville”, “90 Beats Per Minute Hip Hop”–whatever it might be, we have an expert in that sub-genre that we can tap.

The other part of the curation process, because it doesn’t stop there, we’re thinking…okay, [for example] you’re a young woman, you have an active lifestyle, you’re on your iphone and you’re probably working out because it’s a weekday morning and that’s historically when you do work out. What are the situations we want to give you a soundtrack for?

With very little additional time or thought, we can get you to the soundtrack that will get you running faster, get you lifting harder, whatever it might be. That’s actually a separate team that’s mapping people’s lifestyles, based on time of day, day of week, what device you’re on and anything we’ve learned about your habits in the past. And then connecting that to those playlists that our expert curators are putting together.

Music apps can often get bogged down in their interfaces. What went into your app design?

We designed the app knowing that we’re not a music company, at the end of the day. When you’re a music company, you focus on tools around music. Searching through catalogues, browsing through your library, adding songs to playlists, looking through an artist catalogues.

I think one of the revelations we had early on was we’re a lifestyle company. We care about the things you’re actually doing out there in the real world and how we can make them better. Music is such an incredibly powerful way to do that, that it’s a really phenomenal means to an end.

For us, we want an experience where there is virtually no library management. No searching, no sorting, no cataloging. Each time you use the app, in two quick thumb taps, you can get down to exactly what you need a soundtrack for.

The first time you sign in on your iPhone, you’ll see a screen that has very few moving parts. We’re really building for a mobile experience, first and foremost. Some of the defining parts of that are no search–search is really hard on your phone. You’re using your phone in your car (when you’re not supposed to), you’re in line at a coffee shop, whatever it is, it’s definitely not a mode you want to be using both hands to type. And as an extension of that, we really focused the opportunity on things that require just one thumb.

There’s only seven moving parts to the experience. One says, “It’s Monday morning” (if indeed it’s Monday morning), “play music for…” And then you’ll see six situations. So on a Monday morning, depending on how early it is, you might see music for waking up or singing in the shower or reading the paper and drinking coffee, maybe it’s working out, maybe it’s your morning commute. We’ve looked at all of the people on that particular device, on that particular day, on that time of day and picked the six most likely to occur scenarios.

We’re a pretty small market here in Canada, despite the fact that smartphone adoption is growing. Why come here when established competitors like Spotify and Pandora haven’t?

You know, we see tremendous opportunity in Canada for a lot of reasons, some of which you’ve already alluded to. You’re talking about a very tech-savvy population, great broadband penetration, great smartphone usage and also a relative lack of other streaming options. That, for us, is very exciting. As a lifestyle service, this element of shared culture and musical heritage that we also have, means a lot of the groundwork that we’ve already laid in the U.S. is directly transferable in Canada as well.

For those reasons, we went to Re: Sound to secure the licenses we needed to open up in Canada. And licensing is always a…process. It’s never turnkey. We had a tremendously positive experience working with the Re: Sound team. We worked together to make it happen. That’s probably why our competitors aren’t there.

How do you make your service free? A lot of competitors, like Rdio, which does have a Canadian offering, have tiered pricing. What strategy did you have to take?

You know, for us, we looked at both models for monetizing music and weren’t thrilled with either. But what we knew in starting Songza is that ad-supported music (purely ad-supported music, where you display ads and audio ads), that was not a good opportunity.

On the other hand, with subscription services, you have two big challenges. One, generations growing up not thinking music is something you pay for. And two, services that are effectively masquerading as free services in the hopes that they’ll lock you in and then monetize you. But in the shorter term, I think you’re reinforcing the notion that music isn’t something you have to pay for.

For Songza, it was about “how can we use this lifestyle platform that we’ve built and monetize in a more interesting way?” And so we have display ads on mobile, but you will never hear an audio ad. We think that’s totally unacceptable. It’s like selling a parachute with a hole in it. We have users listening to our “Candlelit Dinner” playlist–you can’t have 30 seconds of that go to Geico. Or the last 50 yards of their mile run. When you need it the most, you can’t have 15 seconds for a toothbrush commercial. That’ll kill it.

We work with brands a lot, brands and celebrities, to create these interesting branded lifestyle playlists. Radio Shack, for example, is about helping you make stuff. So we just worked with them to create a branded playlist called “Making Stuff with Radio Shack.” Really interesting concentration-inducing music, branded Radio Shack. We help them expand their existing audience and now we have people spending dozens of creative hours a month listening to Radio Shack’s branded playlist. That’s more than just a banner ad. It’s creating content for our users, but not jamming it down their throats like an audio ad. We ask advertisers, “how can we make your audience have a better day?” Because if we can accomplish that, you’ll have a higher ROI [return on investment] than an audio ad.

Are Canadians going to hear different music in Songza’s playlists because of licensing agreements being different?

We wouldn’t have pulled the trigger on launch until we had an effectively comparable catalogue. No, there will be no meaningful difference regardless of what side of the border you’re on.

Philosophically, that wouldn’t have worked for us. It’s not an algorithm where if 25% of the playlists get kicked out, just find the next 25 best matches. Our “Liquid Dubstep” playlist has an expert who has hand-picked every one of the, let’s say, 95 of the songs that are on there to be perfect. If we’re missing a key component of that playlist, the service wouldn’t be what it is.

Where can people get the app?

You’ll see us on four platforms. You’ll see us on Songza.com, on iOS, on Android and Sonos.

That’s what allows you to tap your phone and transfer information. It’s kind of like what some credit cards do. It’s secure, customizable and has exciting potential.

A couple years ago, there weren’t enough devices with NFC chips. The problem today is that not enough services work with the devices that do have them.

Enter Sony and its Xperia SmartTags. They look like they could be used as extra pieces of flair, but think of these little disks as tap tokens. Touch them to the back of your phone and they use NFC to control its functions.

Four come in a package. First, you have to download Sony’s free Liveware Manager app from the Google Play Store. Then turn your phone on, tap a tag against the back, and it’ll be added to the app. I tapped all four of my tags and called them Home, Work, Car and Reset. Each tag can be customized to do something (or several things) after they’re tapped.

When I first heard about this product, I asked the same question you might: How would you use something like that?

It helps to imagine scenarios:

It’s morning and you’re off to work. You put a Car Smart Tag in your phone dock. When tapped, it’s customized to turn on GPS, Bluetooth for in-car systems and launch Google Maps to check traffic.

Arriving at work, it’s dead silent. You don’t want to bother your colleagues with noisy messages, notifications or the ringtone you defend as ‘ironic’ (though you love the song). You tap the Work tag you’ve stuck to your desk. It turns off all sounds.

You get home after work and don’t want to use up any more data. Tap your Home tag and it turns on Wifi and launches a radio app to start streaming tunes.

And if you don’t drive to work or have a desk there, you can do what I did and improvise. They give you some adhesives in the package, so I stuck them on my watch. At a screen of The Dark Knight Rises I tapped the black tag to silence my phone. When I got out, I tapped the white tag to turn the volume back up.

Now, a few things are problematic. The big one, for me, is that your phone needs to be on and unlocked before you tap. For simple commands like turning off sound, tapping a tag is the same effort as holding down the volume key until it goes silent. On occasion, the taps wouldn’t register or my phone didn’t connect with the tag properly—but that’s the nature of using NFC.

Also, many apps and services are becoming location-aware and can change settings as your phone detects if you’re at work, home, in a car, etc. Tapping is input, but the trend is intuition. The scenarios I’ve imagined will only work for some. It might be a hindrance to others to add tapping to their lives. That being said, the open customization leaves a lot of room for creativity.

For around 20 bucks, if you’re constantly changing your settings and want a simpler solution, Sony’s Xperia SmartTags can help. At the very least, they’re helping drive the adoption of NFC from the service side. This should soon ensure all new major smartphones are equipped with NFC.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/tap-to-control-sony-xperia-smarttags-review/feed0Sony Xperia SmartTagsanandramakrishnanHome screenCustomize Car tagStart applicationimprovisingStarbucks app finally available in Canada for Android usershttp://o.canada.com/technology/starbucks-app-finally-available-in-canada-for-android-users
http://o.canada.com/technology/starbucks-app-finally-available-in-canada-for-android-users#commentsWed, 11 Jul 2012 20:15:56 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=73496]]>Update 2: Starbucks has released an update that seems to have solved the issues many people were experiencing. Cautious optimism that it all works now.

Update: Some users have complained that the app is not compliant with Ice Cream Sandwich, version 4.0 of the Android operating system. I experienced serious bugs with my phone–which immediately went away after I uninstalled the app. There are no reports of this on other operating systems. The app did work for me, but my phone started heating up and my keyboard would intermittently drop out and apps wouldn’t work. Can’t recommend this app until fixes are made.

At long last, the Starbucks app is available for Android users in Canada. If this isn’t a big deal to you, you’ve probably been enjoying your no-whip, no-foam, chai latte and whipping out an iPhone to pay. Time to share those perks with the rest of us.

The app is now available on the Google Play store. You need a few things before you launch it app, though. You have to sign up for an account at Starbucks.ca. You also need to have a Starbucks card.

The app itself is very clean. Once you log in, you can add a card. If you’ve already added your card, your balance and your latest date of transaction should show up on the main screen.

Underneath that is the biggest benefit of the app—the ability to pay with your phone. A barcode will show up for your barista to scan, and it works quite well. Once scanned, you press the little green button that says “done” and your balance updates.

Speaking of your balance, you can “Top-Up” and “Manage” it on the app itself. You can add anywhere from $10 to $100 to your existing Starbucks card, and even set up automatic refreshes so that you’re never without money for that iced white mocha you love so much. Setting up my credit card to do this was no problem at all.

Another useful feature of the app for coffee addicts is the store locator. While I can’t seem to turn my head in downtown Toronto without seeing green and white, it’s a helpful tool for finding nearby stores.

While it may seem that Android always gets played second to iPhone, there’s one wonderful and exclusive bonus to this app: the widget. From one of my home screens, I can see my balance, reward level, find a Starbucks and most importantly, go right to my barcode. Fewer taps, always a bonus!

After spending a couple weeks with the product, I was delighted. Nest is a thermostat for the smartphone generation. And it would have saved me money on my heating and cooling costs…

If it worked in my house.

Let me explain. I installed the thermostat and thought it was working. After two weeks, I realized it wasn’t. If all you want is a thumbs up or down for the nest, it’s a thumbs up.

If you want a tale of buyer beware, read on.

Ignore the ugly remainder from my old thermostat. Nest even suggests you spackle and repaint before installing.

The Nest Learning Thermostat

The Nest Learning Thermostat isn’t like any thermostat you’ve seen.

It’s a scroll wheel with a combination of glass (housing an LCD screen) and brushed aluminum. It’s beautifully crafted, not a loose edge or out-of-place element. The design seems motivated, a word you couldn’t use to describe other devices in its category. Every time I saw it on my wall, I wanted to wave my hand and wake it up from sleep.

The interface works like an old safe combination lock. You twist the screen and it glides through settings, changes the temperature and types in information. To select options, you push the unit inward. It’s the only button it has but it’s a control scheme that’s intuitive, albeit a tad analog.

The Nest connects to your home wireless network, syncs information and self-updates. Outside of turning it off, there are three modes: heat, cool and range. Heat and cool are self-explanatory. You turn the thermostat as desired and a tiny indicator tells you the temperature. Range is also pretty easy to explain–set a high and low and Nest will keep it within those parameters.

The main selling point of the device (other than it’s beauty–seriously, I wanted to mess with the scroll wheel constantly) is that it learns your patterns and how warm you want your home.

For example, if you turn it to 22 degrees Celsius around 10 pm it will start doing that every night on its own. If you wake up every day at 7 am and adjust to 20 degrees, it’ll learn that too. If you leave to go to work, it has an ‘away’ mode to save energy. It doesn’t have to learn–you can also schedule routines yourself.

But there’s more. We rarely think about our thermostats. You may not even touch yours on any given day. Enter the apps. The information the device syncs with your wireless network is stored on an account. You can see that information whether you’re on iOS, Android or a desktop browser and control almost every feature of the device.

Screens from the web app and Android app. Pretty robust features.

I could see my heating and cooling schedules, detailed energy usage and change the temperature from my Galaxy Nexus and iPad. If I forgot to turn the device to away, I could use the app. The Nest gives control over a home in ways old thermostat can’t. Best of all, the interface is easy to use anywhere–there are no discrepancies between web and mobile platforms.

Buyer beware

So the big question you should be asking is: how could I know all this if the Nest didn’t work in my house? Well, that’s the problem. I thought it was working.

Let me start at the beginning.

Before ordering a unit on Nest.com (the only current retailer for Canada), you have to pass a compatibility test. You take off your old thermostat and tell the website about wires you see. It’s very easy and I was delighted my over-50-year-old house was compatible.

I got this review unit shortly after and was excited to install it. Following the instructions, I mounted the baseplate to the wall and connected the wires. After sealing everything up, nothing worked. I followed the instructions over and over, making sure to turn off the breakers each time and confirm all contact points were touching. I troubleshot online but found no help.

The innards. Really not as complex as I thought. Apparently I was wrong.

Next step? Call technical support. The support agent said the unit wasn’t getting enough power. He asked if I had a voltmeter to check the wires. I didn’t. He feared that I couldn’t power the unit–old thermostats needed less voltage than the Nest to work.

At a point of giving up, I called a friend. He’s an electrical engineer and had a voltmeter. He checked and said that the wires were fine. So we tried a little rewiring of our own and…it started working! It had enough power and was syncing. I could control it with my apps and it appeared to be controlling my air conditioning.

Appeared to be. For two weeks, my house did not move half a degree. I thought my air conditioning unit, which hasn’t been replaced or serviced since we moved in, was to blame. After two weeks of agonizing heat and blaming everything but the Nest (including the notion that we needed serious duct cleaning), I pulled it off the wall and put my old thermostat back.

Guess what started working?

I don’t blame the device. It did exactly what I told it to do. Every turn of the wheel, app request and temperature reading was accurate. And it was pretty.

I probably installed it wrong. I’m not an electrician or a Nest-certified professional. I got fooled into thinking it was working. In fairness, Nest told me (through its online tool) I was compatible. On top of that, it actually started behaving. Why would I think there was a problem?

This is why I can only recommend having the Nest professionally installed. It costs extra, but if you’re serious about this device, you’re not looking for something cheap. You want extra control with an end goal of saving cash in the long run.

A single Nest Learning Thermostat retails for $250. Professional installation costing $119. With that, you get someone who knows what they’re doing.

It’s hard to say that the high price is worth it when an ugly thermostat from a hardware store costs 25 bucks. But for the direction Nest is trying to push the heating and air conditioning industry, and for the control it gives, it’s a worthy product.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/nest-learning-thermostat-review/feed1Nest boxanandramakrishnanNest on the WallNest Energy Usage - Web App and Android appsInnards of NestLast Minute: Father’s Day tech gift ideashttp://o.canada.com/technology/last-minute-fathers-day-tech-gift-ideas
http://o.canada.com/technology/last-minute-fathers-day-tech-gift-ideas#commentsWed, 13 Jun 2012 12:10:51 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=60959]]>Father’s Day is nearly upon us. I’m not going to call you a bad son or daughter for not getting dad a gift yet…I’m just going to think it quietly in my head. But I’m also going to tell you about a few tech gift ideas that might interest the father figure in your life.

HP Photosmart 7510(For the dad who says “business is still done on paper”)

The HP Photosmart 7510. Photo: Handout

A printer? Really? Now, now. Don’t undermine the importance of a good printer. The HP Photosmart 7510 is a great gift idea for dad (and secretly, for everyone in the house). It’s incredibly easy to set up. Just plug it into a wall and connect it to your home wireless network using the touchscreen. Done.

Gone are the days where you had to get onto “the computer with the printer.” Any device that can discover printers–laptops, desktops, iPads, mobile phones–can print to the Photosmart 7510. Actually, it’s not just this printer. HP has a line of devices with ePrint, an online service that you can use to print from anywhere. It even hooks you up with an email that you can send documents to and from anywhere.

The downside? All the caveats that printers are known for. The Photosmart 7510 is an inkjet printer, so it’s not as fast as laser, and it’s going to need replacement cartridges, which can get pricey. If you act quickly, Futureshop and Staples have this printer on sale for 70 bucks off the original 200 dollar price tag. Well worth it.

Ok, so your dad thinks about work too much and you don’t want to get him a printer. How about a fitness watch (that doesn’t suck) for the active father? Meet the Motorola MOTOACTV. It’s best for the dad that likes to go for a jog, a bike ride or even long walks and wants to keep track of his progress.

The watch strap is comfortable, albeit a little bulky. Built on Android, it’s got a pedometer, GPS, 8 GB of storage for your music and a responsive touchscreen. The coolest part? You can see your text messages and answer calls via Bluetooth–and that’s a lot of fun in practice. The battery life is pretty good, but you’ll have to charge it every couple of workouts. The GPS is also surprisingly accurate. I took it out in my neighbourhood and didn’t realize one of my usual walking routes was actually 3.5 kilometres. Your workouts also sync to an online service that keeps track of everything.

The drawback is actually very similar to the printer. You have to want to use it. Most fitness tools are user-driven. To get the full benefit, you have to use their programs and services, input some information. That’s on top of remembering to take it with you when you work out. Also, it’s strictly for cardio workouts, which, to be fair, are easier to keep track of. At 250 dollars, it’s also expensive (not including some of the accessories you may want). But you get a great fitness tracking tool. Check it out at The Source or The Running Room.

iOttie “Easy-Flex” Windshield/Dashboard Car Mount(For the dad that should put his phone down while driving)

The iOttie “Easy-Flex” Car Mount. Photo: Amazon.ca

I was racking my brain to come up with a product that I’ve tested (like the previous two) that would make a great gift for dad. Then I just thought about my dad and how much trouble he’s had answering calls on the road. If you live in Ontario like I do, you know it’s illegal to answer a phone in your hand while driving. A lot of places are establishing laws like this. But there’s a lovely exemption for devices that are secured onto the dashboard or windshield.

Enter the iOttie “Easy-Flex” Car Mount. It fits nearly any phone because its a spring-loaded holder. I’ve been using mine for several weeks now and it’s remarkably sturdy. It can face any position and comes with the option for both dashboard and windshield mounting. Best of all? It’s 30 bucks on Amazon Canada. I got mine from America for even less. If your car has an aux port, pair this mount with a male-to-male audio cable and bam, you’ve got a super cheap way for dad to stay connected and entertained on his long drive.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/last-minute-fathers-day-tech-gift-ideas/feed0Father's day message on a white keyboardanandramakrishnanHP Photosmart 7510MOTOACTV_Wriststrap_MapiOttieTony Fadell wants to delight you with a thermostathttp://o.canada.com/technology/tony-fadell-wants-to-delight-you-with-a-thermostat-2
http://o.canada.com/technology/tony-fadell-wants-to-delight-you-with-a-thermostat-2#commentsTue, 05 Jun 2012 12:59:30 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=57773]]>It’s hard to put a thermostat on the same level of design and functionality as an iPhone. But that’s what Tony Fadell has done.

And he’d know a little about iPhones—he worked on that iconic Apple device, along with 18 variations of the even more classic iPod line. Now, he’s the co-founder of NEST, makers of the NEST Learning Thermostat.

The little company wants to do a lot with that circle, and is now available in Canada. Now you’re thinking, “how can a thermostat be drawing this much heat?” Firstly, you think in the same way I do (pun first). Secondly, if a big company like Honeywell is trying to sue them for patent infringement, there must be something about this thermostat that’s worth all this attention.

I talked to Tony Fadell about how he’s trying to make a difference with The NEST.

The NEST is available in Canada now, and this is a country with some serious heating bills. How can NEST help?

It’s actually a worse problem in Canada than it is in the US. In the US, only 50% of your electricity bill is heating and cooling that’s controlled by a thermostat. In Canada, it’s 65%. It’s getting difficult to find places to save money around your house. You try to find the best cell phone plan, you try to find the best cable or internet plan. There are all kinds of great products to help you, different services and competition.

In the thermostat area that controls a service that’s as expensive as a cell phone plan—you probably want to have a really good choice and control over that.

And so what we’ve done differently is that we apply smartphone technology to a thermostat to do things like “auto-schedule”, which means we watch the adjustments you make and then replay those back. Secondly, we do things like “auto-away.” We have special sensors onboard to detect when you’re in your house and when you’re away from your house so that we can actually turn it down when you go away. And then third, we give you remote control from anywhere. So even if you do go away and you want to make sure your home is comfortable by the time you get there, you can change it from any Android/iOS-based phone, tablet or any computer with a web browser.

We think those three things are very important in trying to control your energy bill. And we even have data now that shows that 99% of NEST owners actually have programs scheduled—that came through learning—that save energy. We’re pretty happy with what we’ve done in just seven months by kind of changing the way people think about thermostats.

You’ve certainly changed the way thermostats look. Your design is quite unique. I’m looking at my thermostat right now. It’s ugly, but it has a lot of options. How are people going to equate your design with functionality?

Back in the 90s, people didn’t love their computers. It wasn’t until a crazy company from Cupertino, California decided to make them incredibly beautiful and easy to use that people started falling in love with them, and falling in love with iPods and iPhones. You know, people also had cell phones they didn’t like in the mid-2000s. Maybe the RAZR, but that was about it! So if you put emotion and passion into the product, it usually exudes itself and the customers can see that. So we do that both through the design of our product—our user interface—and our marketing. So it’s not just a pretty face. It’s also easy to use, helps you save money and will hopefully delight you.

You mentioned smartphone integration. I think that’s key with any new technology. But it’s often limited, even when included. How functional is The NEST app compared to what you can do with the actual unit?

We actually go further on the app than we do on the unit. We do just about every single function on the application as we do on the unit. It’s not just control. We do settings, detailed energy history—it gets even more detailed on a tablet, when you have more to see. You could actually dive into seeing when your thermostat was on or off, for how much time and compare multiple days. Because we don’t have that kind of screen on the device, we make [this information] available on the device you use every day.

I brought a lot of learning back from my iPod and iTunes days. Which was [to] make sure the device in your hand does what you want it to do 99.9% of the time, and any of the features or functions that would be really great to have—put ‘em on a device that has a better user interface and a better display to allow you to get into that detailed information. So that’s the combination of your computer and The NEST or your iPhone and The NEST.

Home energy is not a new market by any means, you have competitors who have been selling products for far longer for much cheaper. How do you plan on taking some of that market?

One, we have a disruptive product. We brought in all new technology from teams who know how to build smartphones, services and software. All of those pieces. When you look at the competition out there, it’s hard to see that they know how to build great smartphones let alone services and great UI. We think that’s a huge, major advantage for us.

And we continue to innovate every day. I think we’ve done with two major and eight minor software releases. These products are staying fresh every month with the latest and greatest feature set.

The other thing that we do is our market channel. In the US, 70% of all the thermostats are sold through contractors. And the other 30% are sold by contractors, but they purchase them through DIY stores like Home Depot or Lowe’s. And so the consumer never really had a choice—they didn’t know they had a choice in thermostats. We’ve decided to do it very differently. In step with your contractor, you can buy it at a retailer or at least learn about it at retail, and then talk about it with your contractor to get it installed. We think that the thermostats for the iPhone generation should be sold where iPhones are sold.

In the states, you can buy the device in Best Buy, Lowe’s and now, The Apple Store—which is sure to be a boost. Where can we find The NEST on store shelves here?

We were not actually going to go to Canada for some time from now. The reason being, we’re just a small company and we want to make sure we win in the US and then go to further countries with a winning formula. But what actually happened was that we were getting incredible attention from various Canadians—also, my wife is Canadian, and so a lot of my family’s up there—from all the provinces of Canada basically Facebooking us, tweeting us, sending me emails…I got handwritten letters from people in Canada telling me please, please, please bring it to Canada!

We had other data where we saw a ton of these NEST devices lighting up all over Canada. So people were buying them in the States and putting them in their houses. And we said, “Wait a second, we can’t ignore this. What’s the fastest way to get to Canada right now?” And that is through NEST.com. So we fully intend to go with that strategy I mentioned earlier over time in Canada, but we wanted to make sure the people in Canada who wanted NEST now, could get them as fast as possible.

One final question, the price is 250 dollars US–is that going to change in Canada?

No, no. It’s not an introductory price or anything like that. You know, being in a large corporation before, I’ve seen the disparity between different countries and pricing. I can’t stand that. Key customers get really upset. We wanted to make sure that the price that we sold in the US is exactly the same price in Canada, so that we’re not treating anyone like second class citizens. Especially not my wife!

The NEST Learning Thermostat is available from Nest.com for $250 for one unit, with additional options for extra units and professional installation. We’ll hopefully have a review of a NEST unit soon!

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/tony-fadell-wants-to-delight-you-with-a-thermostat-2/feed0nestanandramakrishnanLast Minute: Mother’s Day Tech Gift Ideashttp://o.canada.com/technology/last-minute-mothers-day-tech-gift-ideas
http://o.canada.com/technology/last-minute-mothers-day-tech-gift-ideas#commentsThu, 10 May 2012 18:44:26 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=52687]]>Uh oh, it’s that time of year again. She’s the person that loved and cared for you for your whole life, even after that time in the third grade when you had that ‘accident’ in class. Sure, you may say moms deserve a gift every day of the year. But commercialism owns the calendar, folks.

I used to think my mother could never work an iPad. I was wrong. For a time, she used it more than I did. Apple’s latest iPad is a gorgeous gift for mom, with a fantastic display for movies and TV shows, video chatting with far away relatives and friends, and a simple interface that won’t throw her for a confused loop.

Unfortunately, it’s a little pricey. The lowest price for a new iPad is $519 on Apple’s website. But! Don’t forget about iPad 2, it’s still a great device and a really good deal at $419 dollars.

Here’s an accessory for the cook who already has an iPad. It’s the Belkin Chef Stand. It’s for the mom who wants to try new recipes without getting that wonderful screen messed up. It comes with a little holder for a stylus and is great when used with Epicurious or The Food Network app. It’s around $40 on Belkin.

Kindle or Kobo: For the Mom Who Likes to Read

Enough Apple stuff. For as nice it all is, it’s out of some people’s budgets. What about a gift for the mom who loves to read a good book? A single purpose device like an e-reader is a great, affordable gift.

Last week, I reviewed the Kindle Touch 3G. It’s great and very easy to use, but it’s not the only Kindle model out there. The least expensive is the original Kindle, but the rawback of this devices versus the Touch and the Touch 3G is the lack of a keyboard for searching. All three versions have WiFi, and that accesses the Kindle Store–hundreds of thousands of books that download in seconds. Pair one of these with a gift card and your mom will be happy that you gave her a gift that’s ready to go, and didn’t make you spend too much. You can find all this at Amazon.ca.

There’s also the Kobo Touch, a nice Canadian option that’s inexpensive ($99) and has a great build quality to it. The benefit of these? You can find them in retailers, like your local Chapters bookstore, and you can order them on Kobo’s website.

Wireless Headphones and iPod Docks: So She Doesn’t Have to Hear You

Wireless headphones have long been sold to men as a way to not disturb their partner at night with loud TV watching. Pardon the irony and the french, but screw that noise. This is a great gift for the mom who would rather hear some of her favourite tunes before bed instead of her son cackling away at the television. (Sorry, ma, I’m a laugher.)

Sennheiser’s Wireless Headphones (RS 116 II) are a great choice from a company known for good sound. They run on batteries and have a range up to 100 metres! Of course, one should always be wary of wireless technology at long or blocked distances. The more space in between, the more the interference. You can find these at most gadget retail stores, and Futureshop has them on sale today!

But what about the mom that wants to fill a room with sound? A good speaker dock for her mp3 player or Apple device will do the job nicely. But you don’t need a Bose or a Bowers and Wilkins in the shape of a dirigible. Sure, they sound amazing, but they’ll cost you an arm and a leg.

Fortunately, JBL has you covered. Their OnBeat Air Dock fits any Apple device (from an iPod Nano to even the iPad) and comes with a great feature: AirPlay. Wirelessly stream music to the speakers when you’re on the same WiFI network. It’s simple and sounds great. They’re normally a bit pricey, but if you act fast, Futureshop has a sale today for $180 off!

In the end, you could get her flowers. Or you could tell your mother that you care enough to want her to enjoy the finer things in life. I promise, I wasn’t told to guilt you into this by your mother.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/last-minute-mothers-day-tech-gift-ideas/feed0smartphone flowersanandramakrishnanThe new iPad 2Belkin Chef StandThe Kindle Touch 3GKobo Touch in BlackSennheiser Wireless HeadphonesJBL OnBeatBlackBerry World 2012: RIM seeks win with BlackBerry 10http://o.canada.com/technology/blackberry-world-2012-rim-seeks-win-with-blackberry-10
http://o.canada.com/technology/blackberry-world-2012-rim-seeks-win-with-blackberry-10#commentsThu, 03 May 2012 02:47:52 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=50820]]>A lot of doom and gloom has been written about Canada’s Research In Motion in the past few years. Report after report of dismal earnings. Products losing popularity and lacking innovation. Corporate shakeups and PR nightmares. Including a stunt it admitted to this week.

From May 1-3, however, it’s RIM’s time to shine. The BlackBerry World event in Orlando introduced the latest and greatest from the Ontario-based company. Much will be written about this being a first and a last: Thorsten Heins’ first conference as the new CEO and RIM’s last chance at proving it’s still in the game.

With the stakes being so high, let’s take a look at what RIM has in its arsenal to woo developers.

BlackBerry 10

There has been a general praise for BlackBerry’s latest mobile operating system for their PlayBook tablet. Now a version of that system is coming to future phones. The company released the tools necessary for developers to get their hands into that operating system and start playing around. There’s even a new App Generator tool that will help people get their content on BlackBerry devices more easily.

What kind of BlackBerry devices?

BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha

It’s a clunky name, but it’s not intended to be for consumers. This is the device that RIM is handing out to developers to build their apps for. It’s a 4.2 inch-black slab, with a wonderful 720p display. It’s a prototype, so actual specifications are being kept under wraps. However, there are some innovative features that will eventually make it onto the device.

Keyboard

For all that bad press, the loyalists of RIM will claim one crowning feature of BlackBerrys vs. other devices: the lovely feel of that keyboard. But as you can see, the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha has no physical keyboard. That doesn’t mean that RIM hasn’t tried to improve upon its software keyboard, specifically with the use of gestures. When you’re typing, the autocorrect/suggestions appear on the next likely key you’re going to hit. If you type “L-E-A”, the word “LEAVE” appears on top of the “V” key. Simply swipe up to complete. Other cool features can be seen in the video below.

Hardcore BlackBerry typists, don’t worry. Heins confirmed that a model with a physical keyboard is also on its way.

Swipe everything

On stage, the broader features of the OS were demonstrated, including more gesture support. Swipe from left to right to see the running tasks. If you’re in the email app, swipe from the left to see the previous screen. Swipe from the right to see your notifications and swipe further to act on them. Swipe from the bottom to go back to the homescreen. The company is banking heavily on these gestures, but if the demo is any indication, it looks pretty smooth and attractive.

Camera

The opposite of smooth and attractive is to find out you’ve blinked when a photo was taken of you. Fortunately, BlackBerry 10’s camera app has you covered. It’s actually kind of cool. A blink can happen in a matter of frames. The BB10 camera app records the frames before and after the picture is taken, allowing you to move to the perfect time when the person was actually smiling. There’s a demonstration of it in the video below.

As I said, much will be written about whether this was a successful BlackBerry World or not. In my opinion, I think it beats last year, when RIM wasn’t touting its own innovation—it was pointing out that Android apps could run on its platform. It was announcing another company would power its search and maps.

It’s a stronger showing this year, with the intention of convincing developers that this is no longer a platform that’s complacent in a vicious smartphone market.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/blackberry-world-2012-rim-seeks-win-with-blackberry-10/feed0Thorsten Heins and BlackBerry 10anandramakrishnanBlackBerryBB 10 Dev AlphaThe Kindle Touch 3G succeeds with Whispersync, selectionhttp://o.canada.com/technology/the-kindle-touch-3g-succeeds-with-whispersync-selection
http://o.canada.com/technology/the-kindle-touch-3g-succeeds-with-whispersync-selection#commentsFri, 27 Apr 2012 13:55:51 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=49325]]>While waiting at the bus stop, I pulled out my Kindle. It felt light. I pressed the power button. A few taps later, I’m reading. 10 minutes go by and the bus arrives. I pressed the button again, and slipped it into my bag.

As part of the latest series of e-readers by Amazon, the Kindle Touch 3G is a solid piece of hardware.

The front of the Kindle Touch 3G (Left) and the back (Right).

At half a pound, my hands never cramped or felt tired. The dimensions are generous, 6.8 by 4.7 inches, which is close to the size of a paperback novel. The understated gray design feels a bit utilitarian, though some might call it minimalist.

The word Kindle is printed across the top, and there are two buttons on the device: a power button on the bottom and a series of raised lines, serving as the home screen button. Several people I showed it to thought the latter was a speaker grill. It distinguishes the device, but serves little purpose other than that. Also located on the bottom, a headphone jack and micro-USB charging port.

The zones become second nature after a while.

The key feature, as the name suggests, is the touch screen. It’s good, but not as responsive as the touch screens on many phones and tablets. That lag isn’t a deal-breaker by any means.

The simple navigational gestures don’t require much precision, though my fingers had to remember that touching this screen required a different pressure than an iPad. The interface is very easy—it won’t stump anyone. Tapping at the top brings up a menu, a sliver of the left is used to go back a page, and the majority of the right is used to go forward. Pinching and zooming allows for quick font-size adjustment, and holding down lets you highlight/define words.

On the bus, I kept reading. I sat by the window. The stronger the sunlight, the better the text looked. Before I knew it, I’d read 50 pages. Another chapter ended. The king had given the poor servant a task to do. It made me think about work. I decided to catch up on the news. I downloaded the paper with a few taps.

Reading on a Kindle is less strenuous than a phone or tablet screen. The E ink display uses no backlight, so it feels close to a natural page. To me, this has always been the best selling point of e-readers.

The most attractive selling point of an Amazon e-readers are the services they can access. On the Kindle Touch 3G, that access is free. You can connect to a fast 3G network without worrying about contracts or carriers. Of course, the network is fast because the content itself is not heavy–we’re talking about text, not audio or video. That’s why the 3 usable gigabytes of storage onboard is plentiful.

However, the battery life does suffer when wireless is turned on. Amazon says it should last 3 weeks with 3G on continuously, but my heavy reading on this review unit burned through the battery after one week. With wireless turned off, I have no doubts it would last for months.

Gray skies help grayscale quite a bit.

Downloading a newspaper edition or book is instantaneous, and Amazon has a wonderful selection of publications across print media and even audiobooks. You can search the Kindle store on the device, using a decent on-screen keyboard and auto-complete feature. A few taps, and the file is downloaded to your home screen, and charged to your Kindle account.

Every book I searched for, I had many options. That’s the beauty of the Kindle store: selection. Though the company promotes that many titles are free, I found these hard to find. I searched for A Princess of Mars, a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs that’s now in the public domain. When you search, you can’t see the price of these novels unless you click each one. It was incredibly tedious. I found none that were free in the first string of search results.

You can’t sort by price, either, which makes finding books that aren’t free for the lowest price also difficult. On another note, I liked the Kindle e-mail address you’re automatically given, allowing you to send documents like PDFs for viewing. I ended up actually finding A Princess of Mars on Project Gutenberg, then sent it to my Kindle without fuss.

While at work, I was waiting for someone. I wasn’t near my backpack, where my Kindle was. I pulled out my Galaxy Nexus. I loaded up the Kindle App. I opened the book I was reading earlier. It told me that I had read to a further point on “Anand’s Kindle.” It asked me if I would like to go to that page. Yes. After reading for a few minutes, the person I was waiting for arrived.

You don’t need a Kindle to read Kindle books. And that’s absolutely wonderful. They want you to use their ecosystem if not their device. They’ll save all your books, your page locations and your notes in the cloud. It’s a feature called Whispersync and it works flawlessly. It does this in the background, so it’s not necessary to overtly hit a “sync” button.

I can read on the Kindle Touch 3G, pick it up on my Android phone, then go right back to the Kindle. I can even hop on my iPad, highlight and add notes to passages, and that will appear across all devices.

An example of Whispersync.

To me, the great part of owning a Kindle is to carry a library of books with you, on a device designed for one purpose. The Kindle Touch 3G retails for $189 in Canada on Amazon.ca, with the WiFi version being 50 dollars cheaper. Its closest competitor is the Kobo Touch, which undercuts it at 99 dollars. Having used both, however, I can say that the performance, features and selection are better on the Kindle.

On the bus back home, I read some more. I found a passage I really liked. I highlighted it, then shared it to Facebook. Later that night, I wanted to wind down. I could have watched something on my computer. I could have played on my iPad. But something drew me to the Kindle. I spent the next hour reading in silence.

Whether it’s the simplicity in design, the user interface or the synchronicity across devices, Amazon seems to want to hammer home a single point: Just read. The emphasis is to read, anytime and anyplace. With so many options around you, you may not want a single-purpose device like the Kindle Touch 3G. But if you want a device that does what it’s supposed to do really well, then consider buying one.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/the-kindle-touch-3g-succeeds-with-whispersync-selection/feed0Amazon KindleanandramakrishnanKindle front and backTap instructionsReading on the roadWhispersyncArrested Development, Netflix and Canadahttp://o.canada.com/technology/the-good-news-about-arrested-development-netflix-and-canada
http://o.canada.com/technology/the-good-news-about-arrested-development-netflix-and-canada#commentsTue, 24 Apr 2012 14:46:35 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=47849]]>Update: It’s alive! Check out all the details on the new season and how you can get it right here.

—

American lovers of the Bluth family, rejoice en masse. And like Ann, there’s a great deal of mass to rejoice over.

Speaking at the National Association of Broadcaster’s Show in Las Vegas, Sarandos was joined by series creator Mitch Hurwitz along with some of the cast. And while many fans may have prematurely shot their wad at the news of a full fourth season all at once, Hurwitz said that it may not necessarily be the last season of Arrested all together.

Netflix revived the cancelled FOX series, giving it a streaming-only deal of 10 episodes for 2013. Not the big TV opportunity many fans were clamouring for when the show got cancelled in 2006, but let’s face it–arising from the grave in TV years later is one of the greatest illusions ever (may even get you on the cover of Poof Magazine).

And they don’t have to ladle themselves into a chowder to entertain and feed the firemen.

But what of Canada? Do we get the exploits of “Nichael” Bluth and see those chicken dances up here? Canadian customers of the online video-streaming service often complain of a lack of options, especially compared to the states.

Now Canadians have one more reason to complain. We’re not getting the new season of Arrested Development yet.

Steve Swasey, Vice President of Corporate Communications at Netflix, told us, “The return of Arrested Development exclusively on Netflix will be in the U.S. only.”

(Cue sad Charlie Brown walk)

However, the fourth season of Arrested Development represents a venture for Netflix that’s still in its infancy–originally produced content. I hope that their control of this content eventually will allow them to stream it in any country they choose. If their recent shareholder’s report is any indication, they certainly are bullish on that concept: : “…we should be able to use our size and international scale to bring the best original and exclusive content from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world.”

But I may just be hungry, in this foreign land of Canada…my jaw clicking for new episodes. For now, Canada, we’ll just have to wait. On standby for the blue men, as it were. For now, only Americans get to taste the happy.

For Canadians, it tastes kinda like sad.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/the-good-news-about-arrested-development-netflix-and-canada/feed0Chicken dancesanandramakrishnanPOOF magazineTaste the happy MichaelFlixel is the Instagram of animated photoshttp://o.canada.com/technology/flixel-is-the-instagram-of-animated-photos
http://o.canada.com/technology/flixel-is-the-instagram-of-animated-photos#commentsWed, 11 Apr 2012 18:14:18 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=45766]]>With the news this week thatFacebook plans to buy Instagram for $1 billion, the spotlight is on social photography apps. Now a Canadian company is taking photo sharing a step further with an app for animated photographs.

It’s calledFlixel, and co-founder/Chief Marketing Officer Mark Homza believes it does for “living photos,” what Instagram does for regular ones.

It’s a very Canadian operation—Homza, originally from Montreal, and co-founder Phillipe LeBlanc (from Moncton) partnered with Toronto-based developer Endloop Mobile to create the app. The idea was influenced by the work of New York artists Kevin Burge and Jamie Beck. The concept is simple. Flixel lets users create “cinemagraphs,” living images where only a part of the photo is moving. In a way these photos are stylized GIFs.

“Animated GIFs were fun and popular back in the mid-1990s although lacking artistic legitimacy. Cinemagraphs [are] highly stylized living photos,” says Homza. Both Flixel and Instagram make the process of filtration and manipulation much easier for the masses than complex (and often expensive) software.

The interface is very friendly. Press the big camera button and you can start right away. “The process is simple,” says Homza, “capture a two second scene, then with a few finger swipes, paint the area you’d like to animate. The rest of the image stays still, while the motion repeats.”

It requires a steady touch, though image stabilization is one of many things they’re working on. For now, Homza jokes that rule number one and two in shooting is “be still.” You can then share your “Flixel” to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.

Flickering candles, rippling waves under setting suns and moving subway trains are just a few of the many examples of animated photos thatFlixel’s community has come up with. The community has been growing quickly since the app’s launch two weeks ago. Homza wouldn’t give exact numbers but he says users are growing by the thousands.

Though its community isn’t as large as Instagram’s 30 million users, Flixel has more than just an artistic appeal. Unlike Instagram, there’s a revenue model in place. Users can buy new filters to apply to their Flixels, available through in-app purchases.

For an app so young, there are bound to be limitations. On current 3G connections, loading Flixels might stutter or take a long time (on Wifi, however, it sings). Homza and his team are trying to reduce file sizes to combat that problem and are helped by Canada’s expanding LTE networks.

Another limitation is its availability. For now, the app lives only on the iPhone. Homza believes that if you’re serious about the mobile photo space, it makes sense to launch on iOS devices. To his point, Instagram made the bulk of its user base exclusively on the iPhone.

“Our immediate desire is to perfect our iOS offering. A customized iPad version is on the way and we’re looking into the Android Market as well.”

Homza is grateful for the success that Flixel is slowly building, because it’s all market-driven. The company is keeping its ear to the ground and trying to innovate based on community feedback.

Instagram may have been bought for a billion, but Homza believes it’s not all about money. He wisely points out the folly of Color, a social photography app that raised 41 million dollars before it even launched, andnow only boasts about 30,000 users daily.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/flixel-is-the-instagram-of-animated-photos/feed0stock phone photoanandramakrishnanFlixel interfaceThe n00b’s guide to Instagram for Androidhttp://o.canada.com/technology/the-n00bs-guide-to-instagram-for-android
http://o.canada.com/technology/the-n00bs-guide-to-instagram-for-android#commentsThu, 05 Apr 2012 15:47:20 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=44523]]>With over 1 million downloads on its first day in the Android Market Google Play shop, Instagram for Android is the hottest app this week. The long-awaited and highly successful photo-filtration/social networking tool has been available on iOS for some time, getting 27 million users. Now it’s open to a whole new audience.

So what’s the big deal?

I honestly didn’t know until I downloaded it. I’ve seen friends, family and complete strangers using this service to share their tweaked photos across Facebook and Twitter and never once wondered what was so attractive about this application.

So I loaded it up on my Galaxy Nexus and took it for a spin. For a guy who had no idea how to use Instagram, it was incredibly easy to start. Within seconds, I had created a username and password, imported some contacts from Twitter and Facebook, and was ready to take a picture.

Oh, my glasses. I'll take a picture of that.

But what picture would I take? Before I stray too far into philosophy (it’s coming, don’t worry), let me continue talking about how easy this app is to use. The buttons are big and easy to navigate, with five in total across the bottom: Home, Popular (to see a curated set of popular photos from users), Take Picture (highlighted in blue), News (activity going on within your Instagram network), Your Profile.

The home page is a lot like other social networks, with a feed of pictures taken by the people you follow on Instagram. It’s easy enough to read, and never loses sight that the picture should be the main focus of the screen. A cool feature I love is the hovering information when you scrolled down. As you moved across a picture, the username and timestamp hover and change accordingly. The only wish I had was a “drag down to refresh” feature instead of a dedicated refresh button on the top right.

An example of the home screen.

Pressing that big blue centre button takes you an even simpler screen, again emphasizing how important the picture is to Instagram. Press another blue button to take the photo or choose from existing photos in your library.

Then comes the part everyone on Instagram loves: The filters. There are an array of photo filters that can age, saturate and/or otherwise mess with the original in aesthetically-pleasing ways. It’s your choice. You can only apply a single filter from the list, with no adjustment within that filter. It also gives you the choice of rotating, contrasting and removing the border around some pictures. After that, you can enter a caption and choose where you want the photo to go.

Now my glasses are even cooler. Too cool, in fact.

Instagram on Android is quick, dirty image manipulation and sharing. There’s no fiddling around. Take a picture, filter it, then post. You don’t have to filter it, but the majority of people do. If you don’t, it’s just a photo management app. My Galaxy Nexus can post images to Twitter and Facebook, so why would I need Instagram?

The options for sharing are Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Tumblr. Or just hit upload and it'll go only to Instagram.

When it comes down to it, it’s an aesthetic you have to like. A colleague of mine said she loves Instagram because she likes the way filtered photos look, how easy it applies filters and how much she loves seeing other people’s photos through their filters.

It's far too cool now. I hope those glasses don't have a huge ego.

I’m not a fan of seeing life through a filter. But then again, I’m not trying to be artistic. I take photos to be funny and I don’t use social networks halfway–I go full in on Twitter, Facebook and even Google Plus (as of late). I wouldn’t go full force with Instagram. I don’t think I’ll be keeping Instagram on Android because it doesn’t fit with what I like to do with my photo-taking or social networking.

As you can see, it barely edged out the many aging versions of Microsoft’s browser. But it raised a more important idea: When given the choice, people want Chrome.

This is all assuming a few things—which means, here come the caveats.

First, let’s look at their research methodology. How do they get those numbers? According to StatCounter, their “tracking code is installed on more than 3 million sites globally.” From these 3 million sites, they get billions of hits. January 2012’s sample size tops out at 18.1 billion, with more than 657 million hits from Canada. It’s one company’s numbers from one sample size, but that’s how studies are done—they hold a truth over one sliver of existence. The more truths they hold, the more valid they are. (Sorry, that got philosophical.)

So what their recent release actually means is that for one day (Sunday, March 18th), global hit numbers put Chrome ahead of Internet Explorer. It all went back the next day.

StatCounter Global Statistics: March 19th, 2012

“While it is only one day, this is a milestone,” said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter, “…however the trend towards Chrome usage at weekends is undeniable.” What’s being suggested here is that during the week, presumably when we’re at work, we’re forced to use Internet Explorer.

I can relate. I have to use the painfully outdated IE 7 (only slightly better than IE 6) at work, and I absolutely love turning on Chrome when I get home. I even have Chrome’s beta app for Android on my Galaxy Nexus—giving me some respite from the time capsule I have to work with.

Ask any IT department and the official response is: “[Insert better browser here] is not supported, therefore we cannot install it.” Fortunately, there are nice people in IT who can install Firefox for you. No joke, that helped me do my job 50 per cent faster. I could work at the speed of me, if you’ll allow such quotable marketing testimony.

As long as IT departments continue this trend, I can see Chrome being the weekend champion. It also doesn’t hurt that every time you visit Google on Firefox or IE, it suggests you download Chrome for a “faster way to browse the web.”

Which browser do you use and which is forced on you?

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/working-for-the-weekend-chrome-beats-ie/feed0An employee stands next to a giant screeanandramakrishnanChrome beats IE Worldwide March 18thIE back on top a day later March 19thCanada’s wireless spectrum auction: Why should we care?http://o.canada.com/technology/wireless-spectrum-auction-faq
http://o.canada.com/technology/wireless-spectrum-auction-faq#commentsThu, 15 Mar 2012 16:49:13 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=39089]]>Industry Minister Christian Paradis has just announced that the Canadian government is putting limits on next year’s wireless spectrum auction in a move to further increase competitiveness in the mobile market.

Canadians won’t for much longer have to look over at all the nice toys south of the border, asking: “Will we ever have that?”

What does this mean?

Every mobile device/company operates on a certain frequency. Your smartphone works in a certain “band” that wireless companies buy at auction from the government. The companies are paying for their right to transmit data over that band. The reason it’s sold auction-style is because that resource, that piece of spectrum, is very limited. Allow too many devices on that spectrum and you cause interference.

The frequency that Canadian companies are vying for a chunk of? The 700 megahertz (MHz) spectrum. The signal on this network is better at getting through physical barriers (like buildings) and can accommodate much more data to be transmitted: imagine your iPhone or Android phone being able to download a high-definition movie in a matter of minutes.

Why is the government doing this now?

On a political — and financial — level, there’s great benefit.

First, financially. Holding an auction of spectrum for a government means money from wireless companies. In 2008, when the government held the auction for another set of frequencies, it made $ 4.25 billion.

This time, the government is reserving exactly one quarter of the 700 MHz spectrum for newcomers like WIND and Mobilicity. But you do need money to get in, which means if you’re a big company — Bell, Telus, Shaw or Rogers — your pockets are well-equipped to pay. Smaller companies struggle, hence the rule.

Another rule that Paradis announced is changing is the amount of foreign ownership a wireless company can have. Why does this matter? Well, you don’t just bid for a piece of the spectrum and suddenly fall into the next generation of wireless networks. Innovation takes infrastructure. But the law that says wireless companies which have less than 10% of the market can only have 46.7% foreign investment is changing: new competitors can’t get the serious money they need to compete with the bigs, even if their foreign backers have it.

Secondly, politically. Today’s event was held in Russell, Ontario — a small town that was probably chosen to show that the Canadian government wants to bring next generation of wireless to rural communities. Bell had argued weeks earlier that any favouritism to smaller companies for the auction would risk their next-gen networks in rural areas. Their argument was that with greater competition in major centres, they would be forced to compete harder there, giving them fewer resources to build out rural networks. Which, means if you’re in a rural area, you would be getting the short end of the stick either way. You get one network at the price it sets or no network at all.

Will my wireless bill be lower?

The standing rule is that competition is better for the consumer. Prices may be driven down and companies work harder to keep you from switching. So, in an ideal world, and eventually, more wireless companies in this next-generation of mobile will mean better outcomes for the average customer.

But it may take a while, and price isn’t everything. When Wind and Mobilicity kicked off, they had pathetic networks. My father was looking a smartphone last year and he did not want to pay Bell, Telus or Rogers what I was paying them ($72 a month) to enjoy one. We looked at Wind Mobile, but at the time, the coverage was all over the place, even within Toronto. His workplace was in a dead zone. He ended up buying the exact same device on Telus, begrudgingly. The more established network never failed, but he’s paying a lot more.

So be warned that while new competitors may get a leg up in having the space to compete, it may not always mean they’ll have the ability to keep competing. However, with the restrictions on foreign investment lifted, they’ll have a better shot if they use that money to expand their infrastructure. And more choice should never be turned away.

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/wireless-spectrum-auction-faq/feed0anandramakrishnanNew iPad mania: I live in Canada, should I buy the new iPad?http://o.canada.com/technology/ipad-3-mania-i-live-in-canada-should-i-buy-the-new-ipad-3
http://o.canada.com/technology/ipad-3-mania-i-live-in-canada-should-i-buy-the-new-ipad-3#commentsWed, 07 Mar 2012 20:42:08 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=37257]]>At long last, therumour–mongering can stop. (By the way, how many of those were right?)

The new iPad is here. Yeah, that’s what it’s called, too. It’s that same 9.7 inch screen, but with a much higher resolution (a so-called retina display, like the previous iPhones). It’s faster and has better graphics, with a better camera (only on the back), which explains its slightly heftier build and weight. Finally, it can take advantage of 4G LTE networks for faster Internet use.

But I live in Canada, and while we get a lot of product choices compared to other countries, there are still things we miss out on. Case in point: the Kindle Fire. When that launched, it would be moot to think about whether Canadians would buy that over an iPad because it’s not sold here.

So if I want to buy a tablet here in Canada, what are my options? Let’s break down a few of the good competitors to the $519 entry-level new iPad.

Note:I’m not going to even get into options like the clunky Kobo Vox or the ill-fated HP Touchpad.

I’m also not going to get into the cost of 3G devices, because that’s a whole other price-based ballgame. 3G plans can range from anywhere between 15 dollars a month (realistically) to 35 dollars a month. And you can expect. LTE plans to go even higher. If you’re a person on the go and need a 3G plan, I’m going to assume you understand that additional costs you’re taking on top of what I mention below.

What’s good about it: Cost-wise, a Playbook is the clear winner. You get the 7 inch tablet, with newly upgraded software, for 200 bucks at 16 GB of storage. Here’s the outrageous part for those of you who like to load up your tablet with movies and music. Quadrupling your space to 64 GB is only 100 dollars more. The lowered price, brought on by poor sales, is very attractive. The new software update is being met with praise–even as a device for people who don’t own a BlackBerry phone.

What may sway you towards the new iPad: Apps. Simply put, there is a dearth of them in BlackBerry’s App World. If this is going to be a family device for you–where you’ll need to find applications for any combination of parent, child and grandparent–this is not going to be as plentiful as an iPad. And all that storage space for your entertainment? It’s fine but when compared to a much larger and higher resolution screen, better battery life and performance…it’s hard to see where the Playbook wins. And if you’re a Netflix user here in Canada, though the selection isn’t that varied, it stands as another dent to the Playbook because the company said it doesn’t have plans to support the tablet.

What’s good about them: High-resolution screens (though not as high-resolution as the new iPad) and super-fast processors make these very attractive Android tablets. They can even support SD cards from your cameras (and USB ports on the Iconia). They don’t run into the same application problems that the Playbook has, because of a much more robust ecosystem. On price, these two actually undercut the iPad by a few dollars (the Prime has 16 GB more storage than the base iPad for 500 dollars, and the Iconia goes even lower for its starting model, at 330 dollars). The Transformer also works with a keyboard dock that can help get some serious work done.

What may sway you towards the new iPad: Firstly, the Transformer Prime only transforms when you buy that keyboard dock, at a pricey $150 dollars. Secondly, while they may run the latest version of the Android operating system now, they may not when the next version comes around. Android devices generally are playing catch-up on updates. And in that operating system, not all of those available applications are optimized for a tablet. What does that mean? It’s like stretching a small photo to fit on a large canvas. It’s what happens when apps meant for a phone are shoehorned for a tablet. So when you get into the territory of “number of apps available”, you also run the risk of opening up the debate of “number of usable tablet apps available.”

What’s good about them: Hey, I never said that the predecessors to a new product wouldn’t be an attractive purchase even when it comes out. In fact, the categories swaying you towards an iPad above applies to all iPads–not just the newest model. Too much of Apple criticism revolves around the fact that the latest and the greatest make the previous version obsolete. Not always the case for you, the thrifty consumer. The iPad 1 and 2 are solidly-built devices that are cheaper than the newer model, and may be a good fit. The iPad 2, which I own and will not replace for the new one, is a lightweight, quick and well-supported device. Also, we shouldn’t overlook that all iPads have the iTunes store, a content service that’s full and most importantly, available in full to Canada.

What may sway you to the new iPad: Faster, newer, better screen. Your call, really.

The most important thing to understand here is that you need to want to own a tablet. On a personal note, I replaced my aging laptop with an iPad 2 and haven’t looked back. However! That was because I had a super-fast Windows desktop and an Android smartphone to balance out my other needs (high-end gaming, mobile productivity). The tablet satisfied my need for entertainment, reading and light writing that my laptop was mainly used for.

Before you go telling Apple or any other tablet-maker to just take your money, think about why you want a tablet and find one that fits your needs.

Some photos from launches in London and California:

]]>http://o.canada.com/technology/ipad-3-mania-i-live-in-canada-should-i-buy-the-new-ipad-3/feed5Apple Unveils Updated iPad In San FranciscoanandramakrishnanplaybookEee padiPad 2Apple Unveils Updated iPad In San FranciscoApple Unveils Updated iPad In San FranciscoJournalists test "The New iPad" followinApple Unveils Updated iPad In San FranciscoApple Unveils Updated iPad In San FranciscoApple Unveils Updated iPad In San FranciscoA screen projects a live feed of the USThe who, what, huh of Mobile World Congress 2012http://o.canada.com/technology/the-who-what-huh-of-mobile-world-congress-2012
http://o.canada.com/technology/the-who-what-huh-of-mobile-world-congress-2012#commentsThu, 01 Mar 2012 16:23:48 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=34998]]>For the last week, the tech world was all about an event: Mobile World Congress. In recent years, it’s become an important place to launch new mobile devices companies want consumers to get excited about.

So what is Mobile World Congress?

Simply put, it’s an exhibition. It’s a place for the world to see the latest in mobile technology through displays, keynotes, product launches and previews.

With the ubiquity of smartphones, you may think they’re the only game in town, but tablets are in the game too. You won’t see Apple at a show like this, though they picked a fine time to announce their latest tablet event.

This year, the show in Barcelona was, as usual, Android-heavy. And with 300 million activations so far , it’s hard to wonder why there wouldn’t be a strong presence at MWC. There was a little Microsoft in there, but we’ll get to that.

With Android, most companies bring the same: More power, more features, latest software. There were tons of phones running the latest version of the Android operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich. Dual-core? Please, that’s so last year. It’s all quad-core now! As you’ll see, more is not necessarily better.

Samsung flashed their Galaxy Beam . The selling point? It’s a phone…with a projector on it. The Beam is a 15 lumen (a lumen is the measurement for how well something gives off light) mini projector designed to mirror anything that’s on the device. What’s not as illuminating are the specs for such a device. Old operating system, this year’s internals. Fortunately, it’s got a huge battery to be burning so bright. You can look for it to launch sometime in the second quarter of this year.

Samsung’s Galaxy branding was so popular in recent years, that it’s going on everything. Learning from that singular branding is HTC. It launched its One series, with 3 variants. The X, the S and V. I don’t think this is going to lessen confusion over what phones they’re selling. However, the most notable one…or One…was the One X . It’s a quad-core, 4.7 inch (these phones are getting huge), high-resolution display phone with an awesome camera and a unibody shell, running the latest version of Android, albeit tweaked by HTC. The Verge has a great post showing off all 3 if you want to take a look.

LG, determined to not be left behind, also took a note from Samsung…a Galaxy Note, if you want to be “punny” with it. (I do. I really do.) The company showed off its LG Optimus Vu at the show. And like Samsung’s Galaxy Note, it’s a huge 5-inch phone designed to be used with a stylus. It’s not running anything great on the inside, or the latest version of Android…but it’s big, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The Galaxy Note next to LG Optimus Vu

Finally, as mentioned, Microsoft held a huge keynote to talk about the consumer preview of its operating system. No, not Windows Phone 7, the company’s mobile operating system. Windows 8. The next iteration of what is known the world around as the thing that runs on a keyboard and mouse. So why show this off at Mobile World Congress? Because Windows 8 is aimed at being used on tablets and desktop computers. Microsoft showed off how the OS behaved, including how it integrates with your Xbox and that fancy new Start Menu–which takes a huge Metro design cue from its cousin, Windows Phone 7.

Definitely some exciting things coming down the pipe from a lot of different companies. But will these new features sell or are they just gimmicks from companies trying to stay relevant in an ever-changing mobile field?

Well, actually, like your taxes, it’s that time of year where the attention around one thing gets to a fever pitch before it dies down. At least until the next year shows up.

I’m talking about Apple’s iPad 3. It’s a product that, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t exist. It’s not confirmed as existing by the company that makes it. Apple spokespeople say they won’t “comment on rumours or speculation.”

But everyone else is more than content to do so.

The closer we get to this time of year, the iPad rumours start flying and coming from all sorts of unnamed and protected sources. The only accurate thing to say without sourcing anything is that, based on their previous release schedules and product cycles, Apple will release an upgrade to their successful line of iPad products in this quarter.

Let’s take a look at what some of the sources have been telling news outlets…

Giving exactly what they promise, Macrumors puts its faith in obtained iPad 3 screens (admittedly, not from Apple, but they’re labelled as “replacement parts”). They say it’s definitely a better screen.

There are no names attached to any of these sources. There is no way of verifying this information. You are asked by these blogs and sites to trust them. Let’s get something clear, their sources may not be wrong – they may even be dead on. Organizations that have earned their great reputation, such as Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, have done so because they internally verify their information, cross-check it, and only refrain from revealing their sources when it would cause them great difficulty.

That being said: without a source, take information like this with a heaping grain of salt. It’s why most of them use that word “rumour.” At face value (ironically without a face to support such claims), these claims make the iPad 3 like Bigfoot. Which means these unnamed sources could get a TV show on Animal Planet.

By the way, go ahead and look at these iPad 2 rumours. It’s fun seeing what was right and what was wrong.